Since Janet so kindly reminded us of Carly Simon's song earlier this week, it's been running like a mantra through my head...and since this connects so nicely with Lisa's post this week about the "Massacre at Noon," I couldn't resist:
We can never know about the days to come, but we think about them anyway...
When I was an undergraduate elementary ed major, I took a course in Introduction to Teaching Reading, and one of the keys to teaching small children critical reading skills, we learned, was to teach them to predict and anticipate: "What do you think will happen next? Will Polly eat her peas?"
Anticipation is neatly tied to the concept of suspense, and we can anticipate good things or bad--like in a horror movie, when the heroine is running around half-naked trying to get away from the bad guy, and the music builds and builds and builds--we know that any moment now, that bad guy is going to suddenly be there, bloody knife in his hand and an evil grin on his face--and yet, when it happens (just as we anticipated), we still jump, let out a startled cry, and then watch as the anticipation begins to build all over again.
Why--when life is so darn suspensful on its own--do we feel the need to regurgitate this stuff in our fiction?
And tomorrow we might not be together. I'm no prophet and I don't know nature's ways...
Life is inherently suspenseful. We never know what tomorrow holds, when our time will end, when life is going to throw us a curve ball. The only thing that's certain is uncertainty. We imitate this anticipation and suspense in our fiction, I think, to help us deal with our very real fear of the unknown. Because many times, in fiction, the ending can be anticipated--and unlike real life, most of the time our predictions for fictional endings are pretty accurate (after all, we've been practicing since we were barely out of diapers, right)?
I'll...stay right here cause these are the good old days...
All we have is now. Today. This moment. We can anticipate tomorrow, next week, next month, but life's endings are much more difficult to predict. Tom Clancy once said, "The only difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to make sense." Making sense out of reality is obviously a much more challenging prospect...
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Road Trip!
Imagine you're going on a trip tomorrow morning. You need to pack: what kinds of clothes will you need? How long will you be gone? Will you have access to a washer and dryer? You also need to arrange for transportation: will you drive? Fly? Take the train? Hike? And is anyone going with you? Who? Why? Where will you stay? What will you do? How long will it take you to get there?
Going on a journey clearly involves careful planning, and that planning revolves around understanding your destination. Before you can plan a trip, certain information is essential: where you're going, how long you'll be gone, who's going with you, etc. So why would we begin the journey of a lifetime without having a destination in mind?
I had a realization this week: human beings need goals. And I'm not talking about vague concepts like "happiness" or "balance," I'm talking about goals that are clear and measurable, tangible. It's human nature to work towards something, to have some sort of "ending" in mind, even though it's been shouted from the rooftops for decades by Oprah and her cohorts that happiness isn't about the destination; life is a journey, they tell us. Sure. Makes perfect sense. But how does one begin a journey without a destination in mind?
And what kind of results can you expect?
Aimless wandering, lots of dead ends, and lots of detours.
And we can certainly learn a lot from aimless wanderings, dead ends, and detours, but we'll encounter these even if we begin our journey with a destination in mind; after all, life has a way of throwing up construction barriers, natural disasters, and collapsed bridges to urge us down a different path. Without any idea of a destination, however, we have nothing to prevent us from simply sitting down in the ditch and resting for twenty or thirty years--there's no where to go, nowhere you need to be...until one day you wake up and realize that you're in a rut.
It seems to me that true balance must be about understanding that life is a journey, but that journeys inherently begin with a destination in mind. It's about being flexible should the original destination become less appealing because you've realized that it doesn't suit your needs any longer, but it's still about getting somewhere.
I prefer to think of life's journey as made up of several shorter jaunts, with a few side-trips and adventures thrown in for good measure. It isn't a long, straight highway; instead, it's a curvy mountain road, sometimes going uphill, sometimes down, and sometimes it's clear skies and sunshine, when BAM! suddenly you hit a patch of black ice and find yourself in the ditch. Success, though, is about knowing where the road leads--or at least, where you want it to lead for now--so that you're motivated to get out of the car, slog through the mud, and begin the often slow, painful process of getting your car out of the ditch and back on the road again.
Anybody have a tow rope?
Going on a journey clearly involves careful planning, and that planning revolves around understanding your destination. Before you can plan a trip, certain information is essential: where you're going, how long you'll be gone, who's going with you, etc. So why would we begin the journey of a lifetime without having a destination in mind?
I had a realization this week: human beings need goals. And I'm not talking about vague concepts like "happiness" or "balance," I'm talking about goals that are clear and measurable, tangible. It's human nature to work towards something, to have some sort of "ending" in mind, even though it's been shouted from the rooftops for decades by Oprah and her cohorts that happiness isn't about the destination; life is a journey, they tell us. Sure. Makes perfect sense. But how does one begin a journey without a destination in mind?
And what kind of results can you expect?
Aimless wandering, lots of dead ends, and lots of detours.
And we can certainly learn a lot from aimless wanderings, dead ends, and detours, but we'll encounter these even if we begin our journey with a destination in mind; after all, life has a way of throwing up construction barriers, natural disasters, and collapsed bridges to urge us down a different path. Without any idea of a destination, however, we have nothing to prevent us from simply sitting down in the ditch and resting for twenty or thirty years--there's no where to go, nowhere you need to be...until one day you wake up and realize that you're in a rut.
It seems to me that true balance must be about understanding that life is a journey, but that journeys inherently begin with a destination in mind. It's about being flexible should the original destination become less appealing because you've realized that it doesn't suit your needs any longer, but it's still about getting somewhere.
I prefer to think of life's journey as made up of several shorter jaunts, with a few side-trips and adventures thrown in for good measure. It isn't a long, straight highway; instead, it's a curvy mountain road, sometimes going uphill, sometimes down, and sometimes it's clear skies and sunshine, when BAM! suddenly you hit a patch of black ice and find yourself in the ditch. Success, though, is about knowing where the road leads--or at least, where you want it to lead for now--so that you're motivated to get out of the car, slog through the mud, and begin the often slow, painful process of getting your car out of the ditch and back on the road again.
Anybody have a tow rope?
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