“Why?” A question triggered by a crisis-point, a person actively seeks out meaning, that seems a little too obvious. Why is perhaps but part of the picture. What’s also prompted is that story embodies wisdom, caring for, before a crisis-point arises…

The wise come know that the young resist “telling” (and perhaps even become wise themselves to insincere “selling”, media savvy :). The story engages, it tells not just of our roots (why and where) but also the deep dark collection of trees, the forest we are better not to wander in to, lest another of those w words get us (the wolves - really, w is so nice to say, almost evoking the camp fire moments). A new generation, through story, can take on board the patterns of those who’ve had the nasty experiences, reinforced with some emotional affects, which trigger effects (through association), not needing, and thus avoiding, the dangerous effects of a real experience, a clear evolutionary advantage. Of course, like any pattern, myth-making can be put to devious ends too (cough, WMD). And I might just be waffling, so will stop.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s morefull of weeping than you
can understand.

And this seems timely, reminding us that patterns also have destructive anti-patterns, no magic on their own, a palette from which we can choose to paint our pictures, they simply are, cf. “A poem should not mean / but be” — Archibald-MacLeish)…

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

– Amy Lowell

Why? The question at the root of a source-story?