The Gilmore Book Club

How a Chronic Illness showed me how to be the hero of my own story

I’ve been studying heroes since I was little, sitting in the basement in my grandparents’ house and watching Luke and Leia master the powers of the Force to save the galaxies in Star Wars. At that age, I wasn’t analyzing the dialogue, plot, and character development; I was only concerned with the cool outfits and cuteness of the Ewoks. But these kinds of movies and plots have a way of staying with you over the years. For some, it’s the anti-damsel-in-distress Princess Leia or power of a Lightsaber, but Joseph Campbell will tell you that Star Wars resonates so deeply with us because it’s a myth.

To understand the mythic characteristics of Star Wars, or of any story, we first have to understand what a myth truly is. Nowadays, we use the term myth for a fictional story or an explanation for something we don’t understand. In Gilmore Girls, Francie and her friends explain that the existence of the secret sorority called The Puffs is just as mythical as the tale of ‘Snow White and Rose Red’. But if you asked Joseph Campbell, one of Rory and Paris’s favorite authors, he would not agree.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is known for many things. He was a teacher at Sarah Lawrence College. He penned many extraordinary books like The Power of Myth and The Hero With a Thousand Faces. His life’s work revolved around myths: learning the myths from different cultures, analyzing them and applying them to modern literature and life. And yes, Campbell’s work inspired and helped shape the original Star Wars. Campbell even visited George Lucas’s ranch to watch the movies that so beautifully reflected the true power of myth. When Obi-Wan Kenobi encourages Luke to “use the force”, I now hear, “use the myths.” And now when they say “May the force be with you”, there’s a part of me that instead thinks, “May the myths be with you”.

Myths are stories that relate to us the experience of being alive. While they seem full of mythical creatures and imaginary characters, myths reveal very personal, vital aspects of our lives. They guide us through adolescence and foster the transition into adulthood. They teach us to find our true selves and our place in the world. They help us endure and process pain and grief. Simply put, they help us to live.

Myths have existed from the beginning of civilization, spanning different cultures and generations, defining our world with their lessons. But through every story, no matter its origins or cultural characteristics, you’ll find certain similarities, that at first can be astonishing, that so many people would say exactly the same thing, describe the same experience, but when you look closer, when you take a good, long look at your own life, you begin to see that myths are universal, and they bind us all together.

Some novels include myths that are harder to detect, but some have myths that would certainly fall into the ‘tale as old as time’ category. One of those is the hero’s journey. From the iconic and obvious warrior in Beowulf to the subtle transformations of a little girl in To Kill A Mockingbird, the traits that define a hero’s journey are evident in so many classics that we study in school.  I remember discussing the symbolic nature of each mythical creature that Odysseus encountered in The Odyssey, and tracking the meaning of Janie Crawford’s hairstyles in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Each novel, short story, and poem we read, parceled out for archetypes, themes, and significant quotes.

But in all of this great literature, all of these works that have been preserved for decades and taught to the following generations, all of them were missing something. At the time, I would have told you that some of them were missing something interesting, for as much as I was a bibliophile, not everything can interest everyone, especially when you’re being forced to read something. I love discussing literature as much as I love reading, but I did question the necessity of knowing Mr. Darcy’s annual income and the memorization of quotes from books I didn’t even like.

For me, high school was more than just doing homework, studying for tests, and going to football games. There was an evil force at work, threatening to destroy my world: fibromyalgia. At the time, we didn’t know what it was, so it did seem more like the Force than an illness, but regardless of whatever name it was called, it inflicted unbearable pain daily and soul-crushing exhaustion on my body. My life was school and bed and pain. But during the entirety of my high-school career, I mostly received straight A’s, no matter the severity of my illness. I was a good student and prided myself on that label. So, I studied the meaning of the albatross and wrote about a green light at the end of a dock. If you were to watch a high school movie today, you’d see the familiar boy problems, fitting in or not fitting in, trouble with school, and the angst that comes with being generally misunderstood. But against this teenage backdrop, my body was falling apart on me. It had betrayed me decades before it was supposed to start deteriorating, and now my life was pure misery. And yet, there I was, writing essays and memorizing facts. 

There would be moments, when I’d lie in bed surrounded by my books and notes, overcome by exhaustion and stealing a few precious moments of rest by closing my eyes when I ought to be studying. I’d lie there and think, why am I doing this? What is all this for? What’s the point of all this studying? These stories, this education, my illness, my life- what did it all mean?

There’s a scene in Grey’s Anatomy, one of my other favorite shows, where Dr. Mirada Bailey stands in the hospital and stares off into the distance. When questioned, she reveals she’s looking for the bigger picture. That’s what I felt like. In fact, that’s what I often feel like now. So many things are happening- good things, bad things, confusing things- but what is the bigger picture? Trying to look for the bigger picture doesn’t always work out as it did for Dr. Bailey; she ended up saving a patient’s life because of the bigger picture. I, on the other hand, just feel like I’m trying to put together a puzzle and half the pieces are missing. Maybe those pieces simply fell under the table, or maybe those pieces were hiding in the future, or maybe they’re wedged in some dark cranny of the world where I’d never think to look for them. For all I knew, those pieces could be in a galaxy far, far away.  Something was missing; that was clear.

 I was missing.

You were missing.

There’s a reason every school movie and TV show seems to read a piece of literature that applies to the main plot. Hollywood executives may tell you it sets up a nice framework for the story, but there’s more to it than that. Every movie and TV episode you see discussing these classic works is giving you a two for one life lesson. You get the literary and probably somewhat dated version of the myth, and the modernized, relatable myth fused into the dialogue and plotline. Myths are deeply personal; they reflect the truths of our lives back to us so we can see them clearly. They offer a map when the way ahead seems hazy. In a world where it seems like changes are made every second of every minute, myths ground us in universal truths, helping us navigate all the transitions that life holds.

In school, we never discussed how these stories affected us, how they challenged us to think, or what they showed us about the world. Had we done so, all of the lives of my classmates could have been greatly affected. I’ve only kept in touch with a few of the people I went to high school with and of them, I only know the basics, so I can’t tell you how knowing these myths made them happier or stopped them from going down the wrong path. 

I can only tell you my story. I can only tell you that I’ve been the embodiment of a myth for years and years, and until now, I had no idea. And had I known, my life could have been so different.

So here goes:

 A short time ago, in a galaxy not so far away…

Continue to Part 2

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