While working on my research paper about the symbolism of the Rainbow Serpent for the Gunwinggu tribe of Indigenous Australia I came upon the belief that if a person ate in secret, spoiled a crying child, cooked on a dangerous riverbank, or generally misused the limited natural resources, the Rainbow Serpent Ngaljod would rise from its waterhole and, causing great storms, drown or eat the tribe. There were no public sanctions against these food taboos outside of the very real fear of a mythic or narrative retribution.
While editing the paper I chanced to comment that this prohibition was somewhat like my close friend's assertion that if she drinks (or uses in general), her whole life would fall apart. This of course upset her as belittling her situation, because for her not drinking is a very real fear that really would have drastic effects on her life. I had to make clear that I completely understood the emotional importance of her claims, and that the Indigenous Australians likewise had very real fears of not having enough to eat. What I had attempted to point out was that in both situations there was no external compulsion or law against a certain behavior, but a subjective story that described what would certainly happen if that action was unfortunately performed. As far as the story works in affecting the way one lives than I am prone to consider it "true," and any objectivity about what might actually happen is entirely beyond the point.
Of course, I can recognize, albeit slowly, that it is extremely difficult to talk to people about their deeply held beliefs in an objective or intellectual manner, or to compare them to other beliefs. For my friend, this story of her life falling apart if she uses is a very real, important matter that she lives with on a daily basis, and to suggest that it is a narrative (not, mind you, a fictive narrative), removes it from the emotional importance it needs to be effective. I imagine that that the Indigenous Australians may have been similarly outraged if a visiting anthropologist tried to tell them that the Rainbow Serpent was only a myth. For them it was a very real creature living in the local waterholes that really would drown them if they broke certain taboos. I am inclined to take their words for it at face value, while recognizing that there is possibly a deeper psychological mechanism at work. Granted, there are vast differences between these two kinds of stories, but in trying to respect that I think there is some value in pointing out the similarities of how people use narratives in their lives.
I know for a fact that I have done the same thing for a long time (and perhaps this is something many people do in order to determine their lives), telling stories of my social or familial roles, or perhaps more relevantly, using archetypal figures from my dreams as examples for how I lived. Some of these stories were very true for me, and if questioned I too would probably have responded with some amount of hostility. It took me a long time to realize that my personal narrative of the world ending if I didn't go on some deep personal quest to save it was, objectively, just a story. Not even to mention my real beliefs in meeting an angelic anima figure that haunted my dreams for years; but that actually happened, which is another story altogether. I think what I finally learned, though I think I knew it all along, is that on one level it is vitally important to have stories to describe how we want or have to live, but on another level it is perhaps just as important to recognize that these are in fact just stories we tell ourselves, that they have the most valid weight for us alone (unless of course they are mass political stories like those that have caused many of the world's atrocities), and that if our particular stories are no longer working to narrate our lives properly than we can change them. Of course, changing one's beliefs is extremely difficult as it often calls into question everything else about our lives, but sometimes, I think, it is necessary to do just that.
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