WHY WE LOVE STORIESTell Me A Story! Just One More Story!Okay, Heres One For You About A Forty-six Year Old Lawyer.Harrys Stuck In The Backroom Of A Creaky, Old Law Firm And Under His Senior Partners Thumb. Life Is Going Nowhere And His Chances Of Making Real Money Are Fading Fast. His Wife Plans To Leave Him Because, She Claims, They Are In Different Worlds. Wishing His Life Were Different, He Has No Idea How To Change It.Next Day His Senior Partner Comes Into To His Office And Drops Dead. Soon A Brand New Client Arrives To Sucker Him Into A Money-laundering Scheme. Although Highly Principled, He Has New Money Troubles And Consequently Turns A Blind Eye To The Scam. Be Careful What You Wish For.When He Finds His Elderly Client Dead, Just After She Has Asked To Change Her Will, Suspicious Circumstances For Sure! He Is Forced To Hunt Down A Serial Killer, Dubbed The Florist. To Do So, He Must Go Down Into The Psyche Of This Serial Killer And, More Importantly, Into His Own To Understand This Psychotic Killer With An Artistic Flair. And He Must Stop Him. Just As His Wife Is About To Pack Her Bag, A Beautiful Woman, Natasha, Comes To Harrys Aid.At The End, Harry Has Discovered Undreamed Of Powers Within Himself And This New Woman, Who Actually Loves Him. And If Thats Not Enough, Hes Laid Waste To The Florist Plus A Corrupt Firm Of Lawyers At The Heart Of The Money-laundering Scam.What Story Is This?Its The Story Of Harry Jenkins In Conduct In Question, The First In The Osgoode Trilogy, Which I Wrote.The Hero, Harry Jenkins, Also Appears In Final Paradox And A Trial Of One, The Second And Third Novels In The Trilogy.Just Click Www.maryemartin.com To Learn More About Harry And See A Slide Show Of Settings In Conduct In Question.After Almost Thirty Years Of Law Practice, Why Didnt I Write Essays, Setting Out The Machinations Of Money-launderers, Replete With Diagrams, Statistics And Charts? Strange As It May Sound, Lawyers Here Can Even Take Courses On Money Laundering. I Could Have Written About Estate Law And Quoted Sections Of The Wills And Estates Act. But I Bet Youd Never Read It.Why Not? Because Youd Much Rather Hear A Story, Which Brings All These Problems To Life, With Exciting Conflicts Between Good And Evil And All The In Between Shades Of Gray. Only With Real Characters Acting Upon One Another Do These Problems Jump Off The Page And Get Interesting. Thats Why We Tell Stories.In High School, Many Of Us Studied Greek Mythology -those Fabulous Stories About Gods, Goddesses And Heroes. Tales Of High Adventure! But No One Ever Explained Who Made These Stories And Why. Where Did They Come From?The Great Mythologist Joseph Campbell Wrote In The Hero With A Thousand Faces That,Myth Is The Secret Opening Through Which The Inexhaustible Energies Of The Cosmos Pour Into Human Cultural ManifestationsThe Symbols Of Mythology Are Not Manufactured: They Cannot Be Ordered, Invented Or Permanently Suppressed. They Are Spontaneous Productions Of The Psyche And Each Bears Within It, Undamaged, The Germ Power Of Its Source. Pg 34Are Myths, Dreams And Stories Living Things Springing Up From Within? So It Seems, According To Campbell. For Me, Stories Are The Outpourings Of Our Psyches From Mysterious Sources. Like Dreams And Myths, They Are Individually And Collectively An Expression Of Our Deepest Sense Of What It Means To Be Human.But Isnt It Interesting! Reading Joseph Campbells Book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, We Learn That Story Formats And Plot Lines Are Also Embedded In Us. In So Many Myths, The Hero Is Lifted Out Of His Everyday Life And Called Or Forced To Do Something Dangerous. Confronting Tremendous Obstacles Of A Huge Variety Limited Only By Our Imaginations, He Must Find Help Along The Way And Call Upon Powers Within Himself To Reach His Goal. Once He Has Reached It, He Must Return To His World With His Prize. Isnt That The Basic Plot Of Innumerable Hollywood Action Flicks?Back To Our Lawyer. A Lawyer As A Hero? Im Not Joking!Events Drive Harry From The Dull Safety Of His Usual Life. Next, He Is Battling Strange Forces Never Confronted Before. He Discovers Within Previously Unknown Powers And Abilities. Then He Must Return To His Normal Life With The Prize, A Good Woman And A New Understanding Of Himself. And All The Bad Guys Are Gone! Sounds Like A Heros Journey To Me.Did I Purposely Set Out To Write A Heros Journey? Hardly! Only After Literally Innumerable Rewrites, Did I Begin To Recognize That Indeed, This Was A Tale Of The Heros Journey. My Point Is That The Heros Journey And Other Variations Are Our Innate Grammar, Language And Structure For Myths, Dreams And Stories. It Is Through Them That We Express Our Human Ways Of Being.All The Big Questions, Which Are Fundamentally Meaningful To Us, Are Asked In Stories. In A Way, Each Story Is About Birth, Growth, Death And Redemption. And So, It Is Through Story Telling That We Satisfy Our Very Human Need To Understand One Another, Our World And Ourselves. At Least Thats The Way I See It. How About You?
