Mythology has always been central to our stories, whether they be stories of Orpheus’s tragic attempt to rescue Eurydice from Hades or Casey’s tragic failure at the bat. Myths serve to bind us together in ways that only stories can. And while there’s always a grain of truth to every myth, it’s the story that people keep returning to. Over the past year, I’ve been listening on and off again to the audio version of Stephen Fry’s 2017 book Mythos while driving around town and on my long drives across the country between Kansas City and Binghamton. Often, I leave each story feeling like the characters, all ancient gods and heroes, are in fact relatable figures who I could imagine living in our own time.

It seems fair to me to think of the attributes of each ancient god or goddess, the antecedents to our modern patron saints, as being not entirely different from how we each have our own talents and passions. It’s curious, that Athens, a city dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, would be the seat of Greek philosophy. Equally curious is the relationship between philosophy, which at its core seeks to understand the human condition through logic, and religion which seeks the same goal but through faith. I’m a religious person, a faithful Catholic, yet this question of the balance between faith and reason, Fides et Ratio as Pope Saint John Paul II entitled his 1998 encyclical, strikes me as something to be studied further. My own faith gains strength through my doubt and questioning.

I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of writing self-promotional stuff anywhere. Sure, I get the feeling I’m doing something right, but I appreciate the anonymity of working in quiet. I enjoy hearing and reading praise, as anyone does, but I don’t feel like shouting it to the pigeons in the rafters is the best way to live. Maybe that’s how myths are made, when stories are half-remembered and embellished, so that someday if someone well after I’m dead remembers me, they’ll remember a version of the truth, though perhaps not the full truth. We historians can appreciate not having all the sources on someone’s life, but that interpretation is what makes studying the past fun.