Lifestyle

"Does Triathlon have a mythology?” you ask? “How can we already have a mythology? The whole sport’s only 25 years old?”

Maybe we’ll create our own myths. In 500, or 5000, years the story of Mark and Dave in ‘89 will be told over and again around campfires, to children as they go to bed, and at formal gatherings. Maybe. But that’s not what I’m referring to.

I’m talking about the mythology that’s within us already, and how our sport acts as a conduit and a conductor, allowing us to reprise and replay themes buried in places inside us too deep to detect through conscious thought. Buried though they may be, these themes are a strong and integral part of us.

“But myths aren’t real,” you’ll argue. “It’s the nature of a myth that it’s based on a probable lie.”

Yes and no. Any particular myth, as it is literally recounted, may not be representative of true facts. Yet the narrative upon which any myth is based is very much true, and is hardwired onto our circuit boards, certainly culturally and maybe genetically.

Consider any mythology with which you’re familiar: the legend of Arthur, the epic of Beowulf, Sinbad, the Arabian Knights, the Nibelung, Norse mythology, Greek (Jason, Odysseus, Hercules) and Roman (Romulus, Aeneas) mythology. To assign relative value to these stories and persons solely according to their basis in literal fact would be to miss the point.

And, the lack of any such factual basis does not mean the mythology doesn’t contain power. There is a school of thought that Hitler’s vision for the Third Reich was largely drawn from German mythological characters (e.g., the Valkyries, Brünnhilde, Siegfried, Freia) as expressed by the composer Richard Wagner in his “The Ring of the Nibelung.”

A modern connection between a culture, its society and politics, and its ancient mythology is not necessarily a force for evil. One view holds that J.R.R. Tolkein did not intend to write children’s literature, but that his weaving of Norse, Celtic and Saxon legend and myth into a modern narrative had as its goal the evocation—the stirring within—that occurs once universal archetypes are recalled and unlocked. In other words, he wanted to create a new mythology for his people based on culturally familiar symbols and archetypes.

So as you see, ancient and factually dubious myths do play a very real part in forming the motivations and actions that spawn the passion, terror, great struggle, and heroics occurring today.

Mythology is attached to every culture. Even if you don’t know or can’t identify your own mythology, Carl Jung asserts we all have it embedded in our “collective unconscious,” including an inate understanding of specific archetypes, including that of “hero.” Though the names of the players may change, the hero in mythology usually follows a similar path, whether Sanskrit, Norse, Native American or any among the list of “national mythologies” above.

Consider the classic Alfred Hitchcock protagonist. It occurs to me that ninety percent of Hitchcock’s movies convey the same theme—the recounting of the classic hero’s mythic voyage. Hitchcock’s heroes, as is the case with, say, Homer’s Odysseus, are first introduced to us as anything but heroes. Whether Robert Donat in The 39 Steps, Robert Cummings in The Saboteur, Cary Grant in North by Northwest or Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much or Rear Window, our “hero” is just an average guy who gets swept up in a reluctant journey. He persists and endures, unsure of his ability to ovecome, yet sure that he'll be greatly tested.

Our mythic hero will inevitably come to find himself in a position of dire circumstance, with hope and strength gone, only to coax and conjure something within himself—that last ounce of heretofore unrecognized strength—and return home the victor. And, he brings with him souvenirs, most notably the memory of his mythic traipse. “I carry these scars precious and rare,” writes folk singer Bruce Cockburn. Our hero also customarily carries something back for the rest of the clan. The Grail. An elixir. Maybe just a race report.

Connecting to the mythology within us is not simply an interesting intellectual exercise. Joseph Campbell, and perhaps Tolkein, believed it imperitive to associate us with the power and motivation inherent in mythology. “Follow your bliss,” Campbell said, and by “bliss” he means that ONE THING Curly (Jack Palance) assures Mitch (Billy Crystal) is the “secret of life” in City Slickers. The “one thing” is, according to Campbell, finding that thing you were—pardon the cliche—”meant to do” (easier said than done).

Which brings us to our sport, and why it variously surprises us with gifts of courage, sublimity, humility, endurance, pain and the overcoming of pain or, sometimes, the succumbing to it. It gives us the occasional failure along with the gift of working through to the other side. It gives us despair and the faith and strength to overcome it.

It shows us things we did now know about ourselves. The Bible admonishes us to “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.” Multisport allows us to work out our mythology in fear and trembling, and to exit the other side as heroes.

I don’t know why archetypes and myths are part of the human psyche. Do they play a special role that allows our species to prevail? Are they similar to other parts of our constitution—like our muscles and our intellect—that must be exercised and husbanded or we risk psychological atrophy and decay? I suspect so.

One ought not to value triathlon as more than it is. But one ought not to dismiss it as less than it is. Many today rue and fear the state of modern culture, devoid of myth and peopled with a race entirely divorced from any connection to this powerful force, present in all men, placed there since before history came to be written. You’re just a man. Or a woman. You were going about life. You were surprised and impressed by the challenge triathlon presented. You embarked on the journey, not wholly knowing whether you were properly equipped. Just the same, you cast off to rescue Helen, to find the Holy Grail, to take back the Holy Land. Or, if you’ve got a sense of humor about it, you mounted Rocinante and set off to earn the hand of Dulcinea.

Whatever form your mythology takes, and whatever adventures lay before you, may your holy quest grant you the reward such perseverence earns.