On Yearning

I read recently that forgiveness is the "willingness to give up yearning for a better past."  

So many terms in there cry out to me to be unpacked, all English-major-101 style. "willingness." "give." "yearning." "better." "past."

And yet...I also know that my academic, convoluted, verbose manner of wanting to break down and analyze these words has it own roots---roots in a time and a place where forgiveness was not a part of my lexicon, nor of anyone else I knew.

In grad school, English majors learn about "loaded" terms, about "problematic" phrasing or word usage, and about "troubling" the norms. We learn to do these things, to engage with them and fight with them, to expound upon them for pages at a time, and to bury them under miles of contextualizing foot and end notes...all, so we think, for the sake of "clarity."

Meaning-making. That was, in many ways, the goal. Clear, true, thoughtful, new thoughts, committed to the page.

I never quite got that far in school. My work was an accurate reflection of my mind--a jumbled mess of ideas and deeply reverent thoughts on poetic language and the meanings behind words and their sentimental and historical moments...which is to say, it made sense to ME.

But writing is often meant for an audience greater than 1.

My writing never really eclipsed audiences greater than members of my seminar groups, and a few devoted fellow-soldiers in the trenches of thesis-writing hell themselves.

And for that...and for so many other things....I want to stop yearning to have done it better.

I want to be willing to give up hoping for a better past, one I did not live.

I desire the forgiveness of so many people in the world, not the least of which is myself.

The Lives of Others

I've been thinking about life. Terrible statement, I know. More specifically, I've been thinking about the lives we lead. That is to say, "We," the Comprehensive Collective of Humanity. I think we lead lives of extreme complication, ones that are messy and that are most certainly unpredictable.....

I have been revisiting some young adult fiction of yesteryear, and I came across Lois Lowry's The Giver. The book offers its audience an image of a seemingly Utopian society wherein such simple offenses like rudeness, lying, and riding Father's bike are causes for reprimand, while the problems of our own world--from war and illness to sexual promiscuity and the notion of revenge--are utterly unknown. And I must tell you that upon first glance this fictitious "community" seemed far better to my 31-year-old eyes than it ever did to the pair that sat in the back of an 8th grade English classroom. Lowry presents a world wherein pain is a virtual unknown, save a skinned knee or bashed thumb; a world where family units are nuclear in the extreme, designed by outside forces to ensure maximum compatibility; where food is provided for all in equal measure, education is compulsory and uniform for all, and "precision of language" is paramount. Oh, and one of my favorite features? In this society one's occupation is assigned by talent and inclination via exterior sources. No application or interview required.

Ok, so maybe I sound a little like a fascist-Marxist-socialist-neo-commie. But you have to admit, some of those things don't sound half bad. And yes, I know, if you read the rest of the book you learn that its characters live lives without passion, without love, and indeed, quite literally, without "color." Like any good 8th grader I know too that the moral of living life in this messy world of color and light and sound is far better than a kind of Stepford/ Pleasantville existence...yet part of me still wishes that I could weekend in Lowry's fictional community, just once.

I guess what I mean to say is that, at the moment, I am frustrated with the the lives of those around me, my own included. I ache knowing that money is tight, that jobs are scarce, that those I love are hurt or sick or lonely or afraid, and that friendships and families and marriages and relationships end.
...
Sometimes I just wish life could be less like the vivid brightness of a 72" HD screen and a little more like a battered old paperback fiction.