The Courage to Create

by Rollo May

I discovered that at the end of the myth of Prometheus there is the curious addendum: Prometheus could be freed from his chains and his torture only when an immortal would renounce his immortality as expiation for Prometheus. This was done by Chiron (who is, incidentally, another fascinating symbol—half horse and half man, renowned for his wisdom and skill in medicine and healing, he brought up Asclepius, the god of medicine). This conclusion to the myth tells us that the riddle is connected with the problem of death. The same with Adam and Eve. Enraged at their eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Yahweh cries out that He is afraid they will eat of the tree of eternal life and become like “one of us.” So! Again the riddle has to do with the problem of death, of which eternal life is one aspect. The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality. We human beings know that we must die. We have, strangely enough, a word for death. We know that each of us must develop the courage to confront death. Yet we also must rebel and struggle against it. Creativity comes from this struggle-out of the rebellion the creative act is born.