They go searching to see God in their own way
As I am not currenty enrolled in school or working a job this summer, I figure there must be some way I can contribute to society in spite of my minimalistic, seemingly unproductive schedule. The best idea I've had thus far is to be a philosopher. But seriously, folks, this is my first attempt at putting down in words my recent thoughts about some books I've been reading. I should preface this entry by briefly mentioning a startling realization I had while enrolled in my Postmodern American Lit class this past term. It's one of those things you know deepdowninside all of your life, but then the truth of it hits you like a ton of bricks: Everything is relevant. Everything is connected. Everyone has a story to tell, and it's important. There are fragments of truth in everything we see.
My understanding of this concept really deepened as I wrote a paper about Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. For anyone who hasn't read the novel, I highly recommend it. At the commencement, O'Brien enumerates a litany of supplies that the soldiers in Vietnam had to “hump” during their marches. O’Brien employs the word “hump” because “it implie[s] burdens far beyond the intransitive” verbs of simply walking or marching. Among the tangible burdens of luggage the soldiers “humped,” such as weapons, rations, or memorabilia, O’Brien describes that they also “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” (21). Because of the emotional baggage that inevitably comes with fighting a war, the veterans are left to grapple with many profound experiences. In an attempt to be understood, the soldiers tell war stories-narratives that are meant to invoke the intensity of every moment, to transform the listener into a believer of unbelievable events. Using stories as a medium of exploration, O’Brien shatters the long-held idea that truth and fiction stand on opposite poles; he creates a dialectic that reconciles the two as no longer being mutually exclusive, but rather co-dependent and harmonious. Fiction, in other words, is not an impediment to finding the truth, but rather a necessary means of accessing reality.
In other words, accuracy is irrelevant in O’Brien’s portrayal of truth. He is more interested in revealing the multiple truths that surround any given event-truths that are tinted by the unique perceptions of the individuals who witness or experience the event in question. In other words, getting at the truth is not always a project of collecting facts. Instead, truth involves a much higher level of sensory perception-an awareness of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that color every living moment. In the context of The Things They Carried, a story is true not because it contains a perfect elocution of the facts but because it forces the listener to feel what it is he would have felt were he in the story himself. O'Brien is imporing us to embrace the truths embedded in fiction.
Carrying this principle with me through my summer reading adventures has been extremely eye-opening. I decided first to read Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, simply because I am so moved by the film-version of the story. Not surprisingly, I was able to find some gems in the novel as well. Look at this beautiful juxtaposition:
“Safran lay in bed trying to string the events of his seventeen years into a coherent narrative, something that he could understand, with an order of imagery, an intelligibility of symbolism. What were the symmetries? The rifts? What was the meaning of what had happened? … And why did he do what he did? Why was he who he was?”
“Every schoolboy learned the history of Trachimbrod from a book originally written by the Venerable Rabbi-AND IF WE ARE TO STRIVE FOR A BETTER FUTURE, MUSTN’T WE BE FAMILIAR AND RECONCILED WITH OUR PAST?”
It's hard to compile several months' worth of realizations into one insufficient journal entry, but one of my greatest discoveries from all of this is that... well, if I want to understand myself, don't I need to have a working knowledge of where I came from? And if my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are to be familiar and reconciled with their past, doesn't that mean I need to keep a record of my own story--for both their sakes and mine? If everyone's stories are relevant and significant, doesn't that include mine? What is my story? How will I tell it?
The take-home message? Keep a journal. Write down the things that move you. Eventually, as you look back on your life, you may be able to see who you've been, who you are, and where your life is headed. I certainly would like to understand all of these things. Unfortunately, I spend too much time brooding and not nearly enough time getting to know myself--my past, my present, my goals for the future. I'm not sure how to summarize all of this without sounding purely cheesy and after-school special-esque. All I know is, I was driving to Sturgis to pick up one of my dad's prescriptions. During that time, I was able to listen to Coldplay's newest album, Viva La Vida, in its entirety. For starters, it's an excellent CD. But the thing that really snagged my attention was the fact that the end of the final track mimicked the beginning of the first track, so that the entire album makes a circle with itself.
Don't ask me why, but I almost cried.
Everything is connected.