David McElroy

There was once a sculptor named Pygmalion who lived on the island of Cyprus, according to a Greek myth. Pygmalion found the women of Cyprus to be quite flawed — and he couldn’t find one to accept as she really was.

So he sculpted the full-size figure of his perfect woman out of ivory. He shaped her carefully for months, making her everything that he wanted, but couldn’t find in other women. After months of work, she was finished.

Pygmalion quickly fell in love with his cold ivory figure, but no matter what he did, she remained dead stone. He had created the perfect woman, but she wasn’t alive. All he had done was to make himself miserable by falling for someone who couldn’t ever be real — while he was surrounded by flesh-and-blood women who could have loved him.

The story of Pygmalion has been through a number of versions. In Greek mythology, a Greek god brings the figure to life and Pygmalion was able marry her and have a child. But mythology always remains myth. Pygmalion’s love couldn’t really exist. We don’t have Greek gods to write impossibly happy endings to our efforts to do what he did.

Sadly, many of us — maybe most of us — have engaged in our own “Pygmalion project,” desperately trying to mold another person into a perfect person that he or she can’t be. It didn’t work for Pygmalion, and it doesn’t work for us.

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I thought about that this week when I heard the news that Andy Griffith had died. As the iconic Sheriff Andy Taylor, above right, on the Andy Griffith Show, he epitomized what a small-town peace officer should be. And his attitude represented what any police officer should have. In a world where police officers are expected to act more like military storm troopers, his character still provides a stark contrast.

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