One morning my dog and I tried to go for a walk on the towpath that runs along a canal in my small city. It had been raining for hours, and on one side the sky was as bright as day, but on the other, it was slatey dark and purple-grey. I stood for a while uncertain about whether to go on or be safe and turn back. Across the canal a little green heron stared at us suspiciously, his tufty head the color of the weeds streaming beneath the muddy water.

I’d been thinking about the story of Cupid and Psyche, which has always been one of my favorite myths. It’s a long, remarkable story, that first appeared in The Golden Ass, a novel from the 2nd century about a man named Lucius who, in trying to turn himself into a bird, accidentally turns himself into an ass. He travels the land as an ass, “over the high mountaines and slipperie vallies, and … through the cloggy fallowed fields,” hearing and witnessing stories. The tale of Cupid and Psyche is one such story. It has a million meanings and interpretations, of course, but I was thinking about the part where Psyche, though perfectly happy, is persuaded to doubt whether she’s perfectly happy.

As much human cruelty does, Psyche’s troubles begin with the insecurity, jealousy, and envy of others and of herself as well. Her sisters are aggrieved that she has things that they do not. Why should she be happy when they are not? And so, they decide to take her happiness away. “Then they opened the gates of their subtill mindes, and did put away all privy guile, and egged her forward in her fearefull thoughts, perswading her to doe as they would have her.” She lets them feed her with doubts, and those fester in her mind. “When Psyches was left alone (saving that she seemed not to be alone, being stirred by so many furies) she was in a tossing minde like the waves of the sea, and although her wil was obstinate, and resisted to put in execution the counsell of her Sisters, yet she was in doubtfull and divers opinions touching her calamity.” She acts according to her insecurities and doubts, and she fears the monsters she might be living with. And just as she discovers that what she had was actually the most beautiful thing in the world, she loses it all. Her beautiful palace disappears and she finds herself alone in a field.

She’s had a lot of strange and wonderful adventures, and she’ll have plenty more. Every time she’s tested — and she is set impossible tests by the cruelest and most supernaturally powerful mother-in-law — she feels hopeless and wants to throw herself off of something or into something else. But everybody she meets seems to like her and wants to help her, even the bugs and the reeds, the rivers and the eagles — even the gods. And eventually, she goes back to the place she’d been happy all along, and she is given wings, she can fly.

Aside from all of the other things “psyche” means, apparently it meant “life” in the sense of “breath,” formed from the verb ψύχω (psukhō, “to blow.”) Derived meanings included “spirit,” “soul,” “ghost,” and ultimately “self.” With a name like that, it’s hard not to turn Psyche’s story into some sort of allegory for our own sense of ourselves and our own well-being. It’s hard not to think of Psyche when you feel discouraged or disgruntled and provoked by doubt. But when you step aside for a moment to look at your life as it actually is, at all of the skills that you have and the people who want to help you, or who need your help, you might realize you’re happy with what you’ve had all along.

As the myth lives in my imagination, Psyche’s mysterious palace, with its whispering breezes and invisible musicians and gentle winds that convey her from place to place, is like the houses we visit in dreams. Full of unexpected corridors and unlikely rooms, full of dust and fear and beauty and wonder. Rooms where secrets sleep in winter clothes, where you’ll find boxes of old letters, half-written stories, perfect half-made films. Everything is in these strange passages: everything you create even if only in your mind, all of your kindnesses and worries and plans, everything you have lost and found, everywhere you have been or wanted to go, everyone you have known or invented. And you’ll find windows that lead into neverending landscapes, stretching to some unreal sea. And in this twilight world of dreams you can fly there, as the “white bird the Gull, which swims on the waves of the water, flew toward the Ocean sea.”

And when you wake you’re alone in a field, plagued with vague doubts and furies, but with memories of flying. All of this is you, your breath, your spirit, your soul, your self.

On this day that I was thinking about Psyche, the sky was bright for a while, we could have gone for our walk though we did not. And then it poured and thundered, and then it was bright again, but the heavy clouds rolled in, and that’s the way it went all day.

What a remarkable issue of Tidings of Magpies we share this month! Full of such treasures. As ever, I am beyond grateful to everyone who shared their remarkable work and words with us. Please take the time to read, and, as ever, submit, support, subscribe. And have a look at Tidings of Magpies on Instagram.