Pursuing Story, Pursuing Truth

"Wanna go see (insert latest movie craze)??"
"No, sorry, I'm already working through (insert popular TV show)...."
"Oh, have you read (insert literary phenomenon)?"

In our culture, we pursue story. Constantly we have new stories put before us in a whole range of formats. We can even interact with story without actively working towards it. Say, for instance, that you don't go see a movie. You still might interact with an ad for toothpaste with a smiling girl and boy on one another's arm. The reason the ad appeals is because there is a story (girl and boy finding one another through a mutual love of obsessive dental care) and because there is the promise that said story could become yours.

TV shows provide us distraction, but they also tell us that reality can be different than the one in which we live. Movies teach us that, somewhere, your prince or princess really is waiting, and when you finally meet, you will be the best french-kissers in the world. Books make us privy to people who not only act differently, but who think differently and reason differently.

Why do we pursue these stories though? I suggest there are predominantly two reasons, one detrimental, one necessary.

The first reason we pursue stories different from our own personal narrative is to assuage the dissatisfaction we feel about our own narrative. We are not all James Bond (which might be a good thing). We do not all flop in a fantastically funny way like Cameron Diaz when the character she plays makes a mistake. No, we have 9 to 5 jobs, we have angst-y problems that can barely be put into words let alone a widescreen, we have normal talents and normal complexion.

But we would like to fly. We would like it to be possible at the least, and immersing ourselves in a story tells us that it is. If it is possible for another, then maybe this world isn't so hum-drum as it might appear. If it is possible for another, then maybe it is possible for us too.

Yet pursuit of story as motivated this way is dangerous, because it is fundamentally rooted in our dissatisfaction with our current status. From the page or screen or print, we then learn what difference would truly make us happy, but we also learn that we do not have that. In some cases, we never can. Thus, the dissatisfaction continues in a vicious cycle that turns us to stories to give us hope, but, because our initial action was founded on despair, we find only the same.

Instead, then, I propose a healthy means to pursue stories. Stories present the other, someone different from us. We must engage with the other because, if we do not, we are trapped inside an insular ring of our own making, constructed of thoughts and biases that we will not even be able to see as such.

Most people act in ways that they deem to be right in some way. If you think it will be tasty for you to eat a bowl of ice cream, you will. If you think it would be dangerous to run across the street without marking the traffic, but you also have an urge to be daring and a sense that being daring will bring you pleasure, you will proceed across. However, what if you are wrong?

If I think the sky is green, I am wrong. However, if I never allow anyone else's testimony to intrude upon my view point, I will never learn that I am wrong. In this example, it would not be exceptionally detrimental to go on thinking that the sky is green for the rest of my life. Someone's thinking that murder is a positive social mandate, however, could go awry much faster.

It is here that we much rely on an inter-subjective awareness, which can only be communicated through inter-personal relations. We cannot, ever, get outside our subjective bias. Even the attempt to do so would reflect a subjective bias. However, we can compare our set of subjective biases to the subjective biases of another, and another, and so on, until we reach what is the common conception operated on as truth. For example, if I start hearing someone calling my name, and someone else hears it too, I would assume that I am truly hearing someone calling my name, and I will respond accordingly. If, however, no one else hears what I hear, we will assume that I am going crazy. Thus we must have open airways of communication between people, such that we can get to a greater understanding of operative truth.

In pursuing stories then, we pursue truth. We pursue a greater range of subjective lenses such that we can gather them up and evaluate both our truth and the truth presented. We pursue the other, validate the other, and, by acknowledging the general and nonspecific value of another, equally validate ourselves for the same general and nonspecific reasons.

We pursue story for two reasons, one detrimental, one beneficial. Choose wisely.

Flash (or fake) Fiction?

What is a story?

What makes a piece of writing something that stirs you and churns you and spits you out, but you're happy for the experience and would do it again?

Maybe it's length. Write a certain number of words, a certain number of pages, and you've got a story on your hands. But that can't be right, because then any rambling could be a story, which doesn't reserve enough status for those truly inspired and inspiring pieces. Besides, there is now not only the novel, the novella, the novelette, and the short story, but there are even smaller forms like flash fiction, microfiction, dribble, drabble, and hint fiction. It's a bunch of terms, I know, and there's no one set definition between these the shorter forms. Suffice it to say that, as a catch-all phrase, flash fiction can be anywhere from a 6 word story to an 2,500 word vignette.

"For sale, baby shoes, never worn." Is that a story? Careful with your answer; that sentence has been attributed to Ernest Hemingway. But even great writers can make mistakes. They can overextend or overestimate their abilities. Is this what Hemingway was doing?

I believe that for anything to count as story, it must have a character interacting, whether by action or  reaction, with an object, which may be another person, a world, an idea, a situation, or more. Typically for novels, there is emphasis on character change or development, but I have removed it from the list of necessities because, since flash fiction is shorter, I think it can only show that a character has the potential to change. In this way then, for story to be story, it must present character interaction and character potential; dependent on the form is the fact of whether or not character potential must be taken to actuality.

So now it's your turn to judge. What really makes a story? To make your job easier, to move you from the abstract to the concrete, what about these?

           -(no title)

                Fighting with what she could, crying, she struck him just as hard. (12 words)

          -America the better

                He looked at him incredulous and asked, "Do I look like the kind of man who, if I had a doughnut, would still have a doughnut?" (26 words)

         -Trade

                The wind slapped her face and the desire reared within her, to take the wild horses and strap them down, hurt them with her whips, and make herself as wild as the temper she would work out of them. (39 words)

So, what's your call?

Strangers Like Me

Back at school, I am once again surrounded by people I know, people I recognize, and people I have no idea who they are. If put in a police line up, I couldn't tell you they go to my school. And I'm not sure I care.

Part of the reason for my apathy is that there are so many people. How am I to know and care for all 2,500 undergrads? I doubt that such a feat is even possible, to care deeply for everyone. The quest then becomes whether we want quality or quantity. Whether we want 5 main friends or to 500 acquaintances.

But viewing the dilemma of association in this dichotomous way is exactly the problem.

When viewing other people, one necessarily categorizes them into "the other" as opposed to "the self." In order for them to be categorized at all, there has to be something recognizable in that "other." That is to say, there is some distinguishing quality that you are using to place people as "other" than you.

Let's take this farther. Sometimes people say that one language is "completely different" than another. But this is poor nomenclature. Why? Because there is no such thing as "completely different." If one language were truly "completely different" from another, you would be even unable to recognize it as language. There is a strand of commonality that must persist between unlike things in order for them to even reach comprehension within our minds. This is because we use what Kant calls determinative judgments, by which we place things into categories. These we are taught from a young age, learning that something that is black and white and says "Moo" is a cow. Something with pages and words arranged on the pages as sentences is a book. Something with rational capacities is a human.

When interacting with strangers, people you don't know, one has already acknowledges several similarities. That they are human, that they speak the same language, etc. What I am saying is that to acknowledge one as different, one must first acknowledge similarities. It is only through similarities that we can achieve understanding, because we understand that which we can relate to ourselves.

Thus, the question is not between 5 friends or 500 acquaintances. The dilemma of association involves the question of similarities and differences. As long as there is the similar characteristic of being a human, we can conceive and celebrate the differences in one another. 

As You Wish - The Problem of The Princess Bride

"As you wish" was all he ever said to her. That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying "As you wish", what he meant was, "I love you." And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back.

It's a touching moment. It's the set up to a "kissing book." It's filled with lingering glances, eyes "like the sea after a storm" and hair dancing in the wind. It's also a lie.

"As you wish" translating to "I love you" is a beautiful sentiment. Why would we want our lover to seek anything but our own happiness? If our lover seeks our happiness and we seek theirs, all bases are covered. We have happiness ensured.

That, and who doesn't love to be told that things will be "as you wish"? Try as we might to be otherwise, we're all a little egotistical, a little proud. We like that others should serve us, we like that our will should be the determining factor.

But for our will to be the determining factor is not love. If I willed something that was bad for myself, your condoning of my will would not be love. Love does not permit the person's wishes, but what is best for the person. This doctrine necessitates the advent of tough love, that all too painful treatment that goes against a person's wishes but is what the other perceives to be truly best for them.

Tough love keeps a person from killing themselves when it's what they want. Tough love reprimands a person for doing something damaging to their body or soul. Tough love is not "as you wish," but is "as God wishes."

This is exactly what can be seen in the Garden of Gesthemane, on the night Jesus is arrested. With the foreknowledge due the Son of God, Jesus knows that his death is coming, and not in a pleasant manner. In Luke 22:42, Jesus prays that the cup, the cup that holds his death, will be taken from him. "Yet," he adds, "not my will, but thine be done." This is true love. True love bows to true goodness, and that is God.

In loving people, we cannot want what they wish. This will lead to a subjective standard of goodness, a goodness that changes with each person we try to love. While it is true that different people feel the reception of love in different ways, there must be an objective standard in order for identification to be possible at all. God is this root of objective goodness, a goodness outside of the earth and its influences that cannot be tainted, changed, or worn out.

So the next time you want to say "I love you," don't say "As you wish."

Say "As God wishes."

Forest Magic

 Oh for a thousand breaths of forest air. To sit on a log and wave my feet at the leaves. Dead or alive, they still dance. Oh to live a hundred lives, a thousand years, until eternity and I grow sick of one another. The sunlight speckles the soil, fighting the shadows but never so well as to cease to be special. Scurrying squirrels refuse to pick sides, yet chatter with chipmunks about the benefits and strategies of each.


Magical morning passes to acquiescent afternoon, who allows effervescent evening. But midnight, midnight is mournful. When the earth has fled and the fairies and sprites have reminded me of their existence, then will I breathe deeply. When the trees shake their tired limbs and our foreign world is coated in paint of a different hue. But I don't join my friends when they snag their snouts in the stars to sing, for I know that white globe to be where the earth has gone, and I don't want it back.


I will walk with a silent tread that only the flowers with their tilting ears can hear and forget how to breathe.

Incepted to Discontent

Inception. It's a crazy movie that leaves you guessing at the end... is Cobb in a dream or not? Is that spinning top about to tip, or not? It provides a good night of action, drama, confusion for the brain, and maybe a couple minutes (or hours!) of conversation after the credits roll. But when it comes down to it, inception is just an idea. Or is it?

Our culture has been clever, very clever. Some may say too clever. I would like to suggest that the culture has found a way to perform inception upon us, and while we are awake no less.

Now before you think I've totally lost it, please give me a chance to defend myself. Cobb himself, in the movie, claims that the most resilient parasite is an idea, and thus this is what the culture has sought to shape. Tell me that music, movies, books, TV, even the commercials themselves, do not do this, and I will call you a liar. Music champions everything from love to sexual triumph, from wealth of possessions to pride in oneself, and on down the list. High schoolers in movies are portrayed by flawless twenty year olds, and a failure to have flat abs is the cardinal sin. A party with pumping music and the requisite alcohol is necessarily a good time, and it is a proven fact that whiter teeth make anyone of the opposite gender flock to your door.

We are told what looks good, smells good, tastes good, sounds good, and feels good. All five senses are accounted for, as well as your consequent morality. If partying feels good, it must be right. Gratification of the self becomes the chief virtue, the less delayed the better (because, of course, if you are delaying, you are wasting time that could be spent shoveling money in to the companies).

Then comes the creation of a vicious cycle. We are both the consumers and producers of culture. As we are told what to desire, we desire said object. Our increased demand perpetuates the existence of said object and others of its kind, though each modification is acclaimed better and more satisfying. However, for all the culture seems to promise us flawless skin, thirty pounds off of our current weight, and a life that will never make us cease smiling, we have not found satisfaction. We have not found the end of the race, for then we would lose the need to chase these temporal remedies.

The culture offers not satisfaction but dissatisfaction, for it is only the dissatisfied person that feels the need for a product. Contentedness brooks no need. Rather than offer us hope, ads point out that we have none and then offer a quick, 100% guaranteed solution that will have us panting before them.

The culture has performed inception upon us, but I suggest that we starve the beast. Let us not buy in to the images that fail to satisfy, that project lies to our consciousness. Let us be critical consumers, ones that recognize the falsity behind the billboard models and swimsuit ads. We may throw off the inception of culture's ideas, not by disclaiming their method, but, ultimately, by claiming contentedness.

How are we to do this though? I suggest that we claim contentedness, not by finding it, but by having it given to us. It is given by none other than Jesus Christ the son of the living God.

Everything on earth is vanity. What wisdom, virtue, or riches will not pass? Build a legacy, and even that will fade and twist with memory and time. The righteous and the unrighteous die; the wise and the fool perish. Death comes to all. Make a change in the world and the next generation undoes your work, or someone else inherits that for which you toiled. Where is the fairness on this earth, where is equality? Nowhere but death.

Contentedness cannot be found on this earth. Mere resignation is the best that can be achieved. However, contentedness can be found in something eternal, something untarished and good. Only if contentedness is rooted in something that does not change can it be called true satisfaction; otherwise it is a mere mountain peak between the rolling hills of dissatisfaction.

Just

At about 1:05pm, I started expecting murder.

Perhaps I ought to explain myself a bit. One typically doesn't say such things, and when they do, they are usually suspected as the perpetrators of said expected murder. Never is it possible that they could be simply hoping for a little excitement... as long as that excitement, happening to someone else of course, provided ample respite from the humdrum routine of daily life. Who invented routines anyway?

But I'm getting off track again. Let me premise the state of my mind: I had been reading murder mysteries all day. Sometimes the pages dripped with blood and other times they lay limp from seemingly harmless causes. Smelling them proved to be no help, as much as I stuck my nose in among the dry leaves, and only my fingerprints covered their seams.

Yet one of the books, Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie, had no murder. To be fair, it had its share of natural accidents and faked deaths, threats and secrets, but no murder. I found myself tense the entire book, only to let out a somewhat shaky breath at the end, both relieved and insulted that I had had no need to harbor worry.

It's odd, if you think about it. I had been expecting murder. You could argue I even wanted it, an accusation I would stoutly deny. Of course, you could take the other line of approach, saying, "It's just a book, just fiction. Who cares?" Indeed, who does? Does the presence of others' care validate or necessitate your own? But to avoid that tangential, though interesting, rabbit trail, I'd like to maintain that fiction imitates life. Fiction is about life, whether in the form of humans or forms otherwise anthropomorphized. It concerns struggles, victories, and defeats, all the normal ingredients of life. Your battle might be conquering that ever-encroaching migraine while juggling your ever-lengthening to-do list, but I say that you are fighting off our time's serpentine beasts as surely as had you been clad in armour and wielding a sword. I won't say anything of your skill or success just yet. The bridge between real life and literary life merits a longer consideration to be sure, but I hope you will take my word, for the moment, that in some way our expectations for fiction, though aggrandized, mimic our expectations for real life. 

So what does my deadly fascination reveal? And let me tell you, I want the answer as much as you. Maybe more.....

I think it shows how we, as a society, as people, as whatever you like, think. We deem the grand as deserving of our attention, whether it's grandly wonderful or grandly morbid. Think about it. If you got up, went to work, came home, and in short had all the components of an average day and none of the extraordinary ones, what do you reply when someone texts you to find out what's up? "Not much," you say. "Just work." Just.

But why "just"? Without the just days, we would never get to the amazing days. Without the ordinary, we would never have the extraordinary. How often do you read a book or watch a show where the character goes about his just day? He or she wakes up, yawns, and pours a bowl of cereal. Or, if you like, grabs a coffee thermos and runs out the door. Works, types at his or her keyboard, checks emails, maybe responds. Feels important, feels shunned, feels overused, feels worthy, feels loved, etc. Then he or she goes home, goes to bed, and gets ready to do it all again. Just like you.

You don't read books like that. There aren't many, except perhaps some more modern pieces pointing out the extreme lack of such pieces. No, the hero is introduced to his quest and goes to complete it. Sure, there may be waiting phases, but if they lasted as long as ours typically last, we'd put the book down, switch off the TV, and get on with it.

Now, I'm not bashing the heroic days. Or the downer days. They are interesting. They are, pardon me the cliche, the stuff stories are made of. But I'd like to put in a word for the little guy, the forgotten day, the in between day. The waiting day. The just day. He's the bridge to your adventure or sorrow, the slope stuck leading to or from the valley or mountain peak.

But it's not just the inevitable necessity of the just days that I'd like to celebrate. You see, it's all about how you act on your just days. If your a class-A act on your just days, there's a better chance that you'll remain so during your highs and lows. If, on the other hand, you're simply a cad all around, well, your situation isn't going to change that much. Your just days are your most usual time, and, as such, they comprise most of the time given to shaping your character. A couple good highs or really tragic lows aren't going to alter what you've already etched into your skin. They might paint you a different color for a while, but all paint chips.

In the end, gilding is a cover for what's just underneath.