AIA#77 The Power of Stories, Gilgamesh and the Hero

I woke up this morning and did some yoga.

I wrote a some what interesting blog post then….

My internet connection was lost and so was my precious writing.
No worries! I’m at Starbucks right now pumping out some kick ass content. Well maybe it’s not kick ass but I’m here. What’s the saying? “Half the battle is showing up.” Heck, yeah!

Well, I decided to stop saying I’m going to quit writing blog posts and start writing stories. Since that’s what we all enjoy hearing. So here it goes…

I had to teaching the story of Gilgamesh recently and I had no idea what Gilgamesh was about. So I had to do a little research on it. Gilgamesh was this guy that lived in a city and had some problems. He goes out of the city and fights this half animal guy, they become friends. Later, they go out into the forest where no will go and fights a monster called Humbaba.

The students really enjoyed it.

It’s one of the oldest known hero stories and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then.

Who was Gilgamesh? Do we all have a hero story? Do we have a forest monster to fight?

I like to think of the monster as chaos and Gilgamesh as the only one who will take on chaos.
Since we all have chaos in our lives, we are constantly trying to manage chaos. The ones who manage chaos the best are usually leaders of some kind. However the warrior mindset is in us all especially when we are seeking to achieve or do something new.

Years ago I read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. It was so long ago I can barely remember it, but I do remember it having a profound impact on me. It had a lot of stuff about Star Wars in it. That much I do remember.

Of course I loved Start Wars, and after reading the book it started to give me an idea about the hero archetype and why they are so powerful in stories.