Story, Myth and Symbol

Why We Need More Than Concepts to Find Our Bearings

©TEA Press

We live in a world that places enormous value on concepts.

We name things, define them, categorise them and try to understand them. This can be useful. Concepts give us language. They help us distinguish one thing from another and communicate what we mean.

But there are some things that cannot be fully understood through concepts alone.

Our inner lives are one of them.

When concepts aren't enough

Imagine trying to explain grief entirely through a definition.

You might describe it as an emotional response to loss. You might identify common symptoms, stages or patterns. You might explain what happens psychologically and physiologically.

All of this can be useful.

But none of it necessarily tells you what it is like to walk through grief.

For that, we often reach for something else.

• A story.

• An image.

• A metaphor.

• A symbol.

We might speak of being lost in a forest, walking through a dark valley, standing in the ruins of something that once mattered, or finding ourselves at a threshold with no clear idea what lies beyond it.

These aren't merely decorative ways of talking about experience. They can help us recognise something that a definition alone cannot quite reach.

We understand through images as well as ideas

Human beings have always used stories, myths and symbols to make sense of things that are difficult to express directly.

• A storm can become an image for emotional turmoil.

• A journey can give shape to transformation.

• A garden can represent cultivation, growth and care.

• A bridge can suggest transition or passage from one place to another.

• A cave can evoke withdrawal, darkness, protection or the unknown.

The meaning is not necessarily fixed.

The same symbol can mean different things to different people, or even something different to the same person at different points in their life.

That is part of what makes symbols useful.

They don't simply tell us what something means. They give us something to explore.

Story gives experience somewhere to go

A concept can tell us what something is.

A story can help us understand what it is like to live through it.

This matters because our lives are not collections of isolated psychological states. We experience ourselves as people moving through time, relationships, circumstances and changing environments.

When life becomes difficult, we can lose our sense of where we are within that larger story.

We may know that we are anxious, grieving, exhausted, uncertain or overwhelmed. But knowing the name of an experience does not necessarily tell us what to do with it.

Sometimes what we need is a way of seeing the experience in context.

A story can provide that context.

It can help us recognise that this is a part of the journey rather than the whole of it.

Symbols can help us recognise the landscape

This is one reason I have become increasingly interested in landscape as a way of thinking about our inner lives.

A landscape gives us more than a label.

It gives us somewhere.

There is a difference between saying, "I am anxious," and recognising that you are somewhere that feels like a storm.

The second description may not be more scientifically precise, but it can sometimes be more experientially revealing.

What happens in a storm?

• Visibility changes.

• Movement becomes more difficult.

• The conditions themselves affect what is possible.

• You may need shelter rather than speed.

• You may need to wait rather than force your way forward.

The image begins to give you a different way of understanding your situation.

It helps you ask better questions.

A map is not the landscape

This doesn't mean that we should replace concepts with metaphors or treat symbols as literal descriptions of reality.

That would simply create another kind of confusion.

• A map is not the landscape.

• A symbol is not the thing itself.

• A story is not an objective account of psychological reality.

But these ways of representing experience can help us see aspects of reality that abstract language can sometimes obscure.

For me, this is an important part of what TEA Cosmology is exploring.

How do we develop ways of understanding our inner lives that are clear enough to be useful, but connected enough to lived experience that they actually help us find our bearings?

Finding our bearings

Perhaps this is why we need more than concepts.

• We need language, but we also need imagination.

• We need definitions, but we also need images.

• We need maps, but we also need the ability to recognise the landscape beneath our feet.

Story, myth and symbol can give us ways of doing that.

They can help us recognise something before we have fully understood it.

They can give shape to an experience that is still difficult to articulate.

And sometimes, simply being able to recognise where we are is the beginning of finding our way.

Is there a story, image or symbol that helps you recognise where you are in your own landscape?