Entry 452 — Myth
When reading at Geof’s blog that he considers “greatness” a “myth,” I was reminded of my sadness at the nullinguists’ destruction of the word, “myth.” It used to mean the achievement of something beyond the power of mortals, but gloriously true beyond the empirically real that those without imaginations are stuck in. Jason’s winning of the golden fleece that I read about in one of the best Christmas presents I ever got, a copy of The Golden Book of Myths (or some such) that my brother Bill gave me when I was around ten, for example. Now “myth” only means some view of life the person using the word doesn’t accept.
Putting together a dictionary of wonderful words lost to nullinguism like “marriage,” “gay,” “impact,” “poetry,” “genius” would be a worthwhile project–except that I suppose, although it seems like they outnumber the good words retained (so far), there really aren’t very many such words.
As for “greatness,” it is by definition unarguably a fact, the definition being some person’s achievement of something people admire, enjoy and celebrate centuries after the person has died. It may make me look sadly unrealistic but it’s something I’ve striven for since I was six or seven, although I wouldn’t have known enough to describe it as such until my middle teens. The only reason I didn’t strive for it before then was that I hadn’t yet learned I didn’t already have it.
Confession: I have not given up, probably can’t give up, the notion that I may yet gain it, or already have.
Excelsior!