The flow of history can be gauged from many perspectives. On the broadest level, somebody like Splengler can trace the decline of the west over many generations. The end of feudalism, the age of enlightenment, the industrial revolution and like macro changes are the inhalations of that vast biosphere we call civilization. Alongside these massive movements, we find singular events that can change history’s trajectory. These events may not seem so singular to those who lived them. I’m sure Themistocles had no intention of preserving Athenian democracy for future generations to emulate when he defeated Xerxes at the battle of Salamis. The Battle of Hastings laid the groundwork for the emergence of Britain. Who could argue that inventions like the printing press, the electric light bulb, or the transistor were not of historic significance? Unlike macro changes that are slow-moving and causally continuous over a long period of time, micro changes are discontinuous, “coming out of nowhere,” and represent quantum leaps forward. They can send history spinning in new and unanticipated directions.

Now these were the grand ideas floating in my head during my daily “recreational” walk when I was suddenly alarmed by two screeching seagulls. They were just overhead, perched on a rooftop, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. What inspired their clarion call is not for me to know, but I suspect it had something to do with fish. They both swooped over my head, piercing my ear drums with raucous excitement as they descended on the Bay. Now awakened out of my abstract reverie, my olfactory sense became aware of the tide’s recent residue. Those birds were attuned to their senses and to the course of nature in their little feathered bodies. And, at that moment, I too was made to feel the call of nature. How is it that we can be so arrested by nature? Whether witnessing the patterns of life or the certitude of death, we are drawn into a center where the flurry of thoughts cease and our individual lives are momentarily stilled. At those times we are drawn into the mythic realm, what Joseph Campbell identified as the transcendent world of mysteries. Here is where words fail and only the religious or artistic symbol points. Language, after all, is not real in the same sense as what it represents. And symbols, as Jung explained, refer to mysteries—those transcendent, subtle things we know but can’t define.

So what do myths have to do with the flow of history? Perhaps everything, for they are the creative force behind the ideas that empower generations. The great epic poems like the Aeneid or the Odyssey represent the foundations of Roman and Greek culture. Could we say less of the influence of the Bible on the West? These works have held the wisdom and values at the very groundswell of the civilizations that mark our history. Having said that, I don’t mean they define truth, justice, beauty, and goodness. For these words are the linguistic metaphors we use for the unattainable. Myths help us recognize their values. But mostly they inspire us to seek them out and emulate them in our individual lives. For whether arrested by nature or a religious experience or a work of art, whether touched by an act of kindness or inspired by a flash of intuition, it is in the mythic world of wonderment that we find the true north of our personal history. Philosophers and historians have told us that change—macro or micro—starts with individuals. Personal change can infect a community and become part of the collective. Or it can create new opportunities by means of an invention, an extraordinary act, or an innovative idea. For it is to the degree we can share our mythic experiences with others that the history of our time will be generated. The initiating point is the “now” experience for that is the portal to the future. And that experience requires only that we be fully awake and still in the moment.

Joseph Campbell regretted that the West seemed to lack a motivating myth for our time. I think it’s possible he may have been wrong. Perhaps we are all too caught up in the fast moving current to see its direction. But the way to stay still in this current is to flow with it. A screeching bird can awaken one to that fact.