Recently a newspaper or magazine had an article about growing up. I think it was the New York Times, but I can't remember. The article talked about how 20-somethings are not growing up as quickly as they used to--specifically more of us live at home with our parents, haven't finished school, and are still single.
This morning my mom packed my lunch. My "first-day-in-over-20-years-you-have-not-started-school" lunch. Even though my mom packed my lunch this morning and I am as single as can be, a few things have happened recently that have made me pause and think, "Wow, this is grown up."
-- I bought my own bed, by myself, and it's not a twin
-- Only 40% of my grandparents are still living (I had five grandparents)
-- I am experiencing the grief and shock that comes with the death of a friend and mentor
-- My younger sister is getting married
-- I realized the other day that I remember my brother's life in its entirety from a relatively adult perspective
-- I'm moving across the country and my mom isn't coming to help me
-- Being the fifth-wheel to two married couples is actually pretty fun
-- I sit on committees and boards with people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s and call them by their first names
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Real
Seventeen years old and still sitting in the front row. Ms. Walsten was perched on her stool peering through her glasses at her seating chart. A.D. and M.C. conveniently felt the need for a tissue from the back of the classroom during our pop quizzes on books they hadn’t read. It afforded them a walk back to their seats past the quizzes of several unsuspecting students. During the class breaks on block schedule days, I hurried to Ms. Walsten’s podium to peer through my own new glasses at the seating chart speckled with check marks to reassure myself that I had safely achieved 150% of the possible participation points for the month. My new glasses and the restored gift of sight failed to persuade me to vacate my front row seat in AP English, or any other class for that matter.
We spent a quarter reading what I will term “classical literature.” Oedipus, Homer, and yes, I know I’m mixing titles and authors. Third quarter was satire: Gulliver’s Travels (painful), Pride and Prejudice (a significant improvement), and The Importance of Being Earnest (laugh out loud hilarious). Somewhere between the classics and satire we read The Once and Future King, but fourth quarter sticks out most clearly in my memory.
Until that last quarter of my last year of high school, I had generally accepted what was printed on a page as true. I knew I was reading many works of fiction; but the ideas were true, the people were somehow real, and I was enveloped in their world. It made sense that Oedipus would gouge out his own eyes in the moment of horror upon discovering he killed his father and married his mother. It made sense that girls would daydream about officers and plot ways to run into eligible young men of good fortune on afternoon walks. And for some reason I can no longer remember, it even made sense that Lilliputians would seize and tie down a normal human being. But existentialism did not make sense. During that fourth quarter, I not only disliked reading a book, I had a particular, curiously unfamiliar distaste for a particular genre of literature.
We read The Awakening, by Kate Chopin and Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf; but the most shocking was Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. It is quite remarkable that this play could be shocking or offensive to anyone when you think about it. The entire play can be summed up in the following lines:
Character 1: “What are you doing?”
Character 2: “Waiting for Godot.”
Rinse and repeat for approximately 100 pages. Godot never shows. As far as I can recall, the characters never actually accomplish anything. Though I was completely undisturbed by the lack of action or accomplishment in Pride and Prejudice, it was a sore subject for me when we discussed Godot in class. I remember being furious, disturbed, and uncharacteristically silenced all at the same time. As I pondered why we had been assigned such a pointless book, Ms. Walsten suggested to the class that Godot represented God and that Beckett was attempting to show God’s absence from the world and the lives of his characters.
But I knew that was wrong. It couldn’t possibly be right. God was there; He was here; and He is still here. I had felt His influence, His Spirit. Beckett was wrong. An author could be wrong. A publisher could be wrong. The words on the page were wrong. Their meaning was wrong.
Twenty-five years old and still reading disenchanted post-war literature. I sat on the bed in my hotel room in Albany, New York, counting the minutes until the second day of the bar exam would begin and I would be that much closer to freedom. I got up to turn the air conditioner on; settled back in the bed for an episode of Law & Order; got up to put on a sweatshirt (that air conditioner was really working); settled in for a phone call with my mom; got up for room service; and finally settled back into bed, covers on, air conditioner blowing, perfectly curled up with my book: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
“Can a man who’s warm understand one who is freezing?” Pause. I reread the words a few times. “Can a man who’s warm understand one who is freezing?” Can a girl, recently graduated from law school, in the middle of the New York Bar Examination, curled up reading a book on a semi-comfortable bed with semi-comfortable pillows understand life in a Soviet labor camp?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been there, in the very labor camp he was describing. He did not concoct some fictional freeze, he had felt it. The words were real—true—and yet, they seemed like a movie. Vague specters, mere shadows, of freezing cold men with wrapped feet and holes in their boots passed through my mind as my eyes glanced over the words: “Can a man who’s warm understand one who is freezing?” Could I, wrapped in my blankets and hoodie to protect against the cool air streaming from the vent understand or even conceive of negative 40 degrees Celsius? Not even a shudder or shiver of recollection of sprints from my apartment to my car in 7 degree Fahrenheit weather crossed my mind with the shadows of Soviet prisoners. This real account had no bearing on my reality, no analogy to my experience.
Why exactly did I reread that line over and over and over again, getting up one more time to find my journal and copy the line there? Why did this line remind me of my senior year of high school and Samuel Beckett?
I still submit that not all written words are truth. Perhaps my experience with Godot made me more dismissive of written words in general. If not Godot, then certainly three years of mind-warping legal realism has twisted my sense of reality. Somehow the ability to argue almost any point either way inhibits even an ability to sense the veracity of unbearable cold. Not in the sense that I would deny such horrors were ever experienced, only in the sense that reading about laying bricks fast enough so the mortar will not freeze first no longer gives me goose bumps.
But something else bothered me—the presumption that a person cannot understand another without physically feeling the same experiences. Is Solzhenitsyn correct? Is it impossible to feel empathy for another without experiencing exactly what they have? Perhaps perfect empathy requires perfect understanding of another’s experience, and without actual experience there can be no perfect understanding. But Solzhenitsyn would not have written, or at least would not have published, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had he not believed that it may offer some glimpse of understanding into his life and experiences for those who were previously unaware of such conditions.
The written word has the power to move the reader. The written word not only informs, but prompts and prods and pricks the reader’s conscience and heart. Mere knowledge of a condition is the first necessary ingredient for empathy. Working together with instilled moral values and remembered—though different and perhaps unrelated—experiences, a story, complete with detail and description, may cause the reader to feel rather than simply know. That feeling is the beginning of understanding.
The written word possesses an incredible power to transform. Such transformations may be for better or worse, toward truth or falsity—the fact that something is written is no voucher for reliability. But written words and carefully crafted language can and do plant the seeds of understanding and empathy—the catalysts for change. Whatever Beckett felt and however I may disagree, his feelings were real and his words help me understand him if I will choose to be an engaged reader.
We spent a quarter reading what I will term “classical literature.” Oedipus, Homer, and yes, I know I’m mixing titles and authors. Third quarter was satire: Gulliver’s Travels (painful), Pride and Prejudice (a significant improvement), and The Importance of Being Earnest (laugh out loud hilarious). Somewhere between the classics and satire we read The Once and Future King, but fourth quarter sticks out most clearly in my memory.
Until that last quarter of my last year of high school, I had generally accepted what was printed on a page as true. I knew I was reading many works of fiction; but the ideas were true, the people were somehow real, and I was enveloped in their world. It made sense that Oedipus would gouge out his own eyes in the moment of horror upon discovering he killed his father and married his mother. It made sense that girls would daydream about officers and plot ways to run into eligible young men of good fortune on afternoon walks. And for some reason I can no longer remember, it even made sense that Lilliputians would seize and tie down a normal human being. But existentialism did not make sense. During that fourth quarter, I not only disliked reading a book, I had a particular, curiously unfamiliar distaste for a particular genre of literature.
We read The Awakening, by Kate Chopin and Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf; but the most shocking was Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. It is quite remarkable that this play could be shocking or offensive to anyone when you think about it. The entire play can be summed up in the following lines:
Character 1: “What are you doing?”
Character 2: “Waiting for Godot.”
Rinse and repeat for approximately 100 pages. Godot never shows. As far as I can recall, the characters never actually accomplish anything. Though I was completely undisturbed by the lack of action or accomplishment in Pride and Prejudice, it was a sore subject for me when we discussed Godot in class. I remember being furious, disturbed, and uncharacteristically silenced all at the same time. As I pondered why we had been assigned such a pointless book, Ms. Walsten suggested to the class that Godot represented God and that Beckett was attempting to show God’s absence from the world and the lives of his characters.
But I knew that was wrong. It couldn’t possibly be right. God was there; He was here; and He is still here. I had felt His influence, His Spirit. Beckett was wrong. An author could be wrong. A publisher could be wrong. The words on the page were wrong. Their meaning was wrong.
Twenty-five years old and still reading disenchanted post-war literature. I sat on the bed in my hotel room in Albany, New York, counting the minutes until the second day of the bar exam would begin and I would be that much closer to freedom. I got up to turn the air conditioner on; settled back in the bed for an episode of Law & Order; got up to put on a sweatshirt (that air conditioner was really working); settled in for a phone call with my mom; got up for room service; and finally settled back into bed, covers on, air conditioner blowing, perfectly curled up with my book: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
“Can a man who’s warm understand one who is freezing?” Pause. I reread the words a few times. “Can a man who’s warm understand one who is freezing?” Can a girl, recently graduated from law school, in the middle of the New York Bar Examination, curled up reading a book on a semi-comfortable bed with semi-comfortable pillows understand life in a Soviet labor camp?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been there, in the very labor camp he was describing. He did not concoct some fictional freeze, he had felt it. The words were real—true—and yet, they seemed like a movie. Vague specters, mere shadows, of freezing cold men with wrapped feet and holes in their boots passed through my mind as my eyes glanced over the words: “Can a man who’s warm understand one who is freezing?” Could I, wrapped in my blankets and hoodie to protect against the cool air streaming from the vent understand or even conceive of negative 40 degrees Celsius? Not even a shudder or shiver of recollection of sprints from my apartment to my car in 7 degree Fahrenheit weather crossed my mind with the shadows of Soviet prisoners. This real account had no bearing on my reality, no analogy to my experience.
Why exactly did I reread that line over and over and over again, getting up one more time to find my journal and copy the line there? Why did this line remind me of my senior year of high school and Samuel Beckett?
I still submit that not all written words are truth. Perhaps my experience with Godot made me more dismissive of written words in general. If not Godot, then certainly three years of mind-warping legal realism has twisted my sense of reality. Somehow the ability to argue almost any point either way inhibits even an ability to sense the veracity of unbearable cold. Not in the sense that I would deny such horrors were ever experienced, only in the sense that reading about laying bricks fast enough so the mortar will not freeze first no longer gives me goose bumps.
But something else bothered me—the presumption that a person cannot understand another without physically feeling the same experiences. Is Solzhenitsyn correct? Is it impossible to feel empathy for another without experiencing exactly what they have? Perhaps perfect empathy requires perfect understanding of another’s experience, and without actual experience there can be no perfect understanding. But Solzhenitsyn would not have written, or at least would not have published, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had he not believed that it may offer some glimpse of understanding into his life and experiences for those who were previously unaware of such conditions.
The written word has the power to move the reader. The written word not only informs, but prompts and prods and pricks the reader’s conscience and heart. Mere knowledge of a condition is the first necessary ingredient for empathy. Working together with instilled moral values and remembered—though different and perhaps unrelated—experiences, a story, complete with detail and description, may cause the reader to feel rather than simply know. That feeling is the beginning of understanding.
The written word possesses an incredible power to transform. Such transformations may be for better or worse, toward truth or falsity—the fact that something is written is no voucher for reliability. But written words and carefully crafted language can and do plant the seeds of understanding and empathy—the catalysts for change. Whatever Beckett felt and however I may disagree, his feelings were real and his words help me understand him if I will choose to be an engaged reader.
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