inadequacies: The meaning of literature

All of human kind is defined by one single thread. There are families, there are loves and hatreds, there are catastrophes and terror, hope and despair. We are all different, all having our own thoughts, hopes and fears, but there is one thread that ties us all together into a single soul.

Humans are, we are- every one of us- defined by stories.

Stories are what make us human. The ability to tell a tale is our defining characteristic. It’s the ability to empathize, the ability to relate to another- even when that other doesn’t actually exist- that is our human gift, and our human connection. Our lives are beautiful tales, collections of wonderous short stories wrapped in novels that hide inside epic poems floating in the most beautiful songs that sing the verses of a prayer.

At this very moment, each one of us is the star of their story, and at the same time they are major and minor characters in other stories. Even as I draft this on my iPad, waiting for an appointment in a clinic in West Linn, I am a minor character in the story of all those around me. The clerk who checked me in, the person sitting next to me reading Auto Week, even the man who parked across from me, who nodded and smiled as he passed me in the parking lot and noticed me carrying this iPad, so similar to the one he was carrying.

Each person around me is a universe of story in which I am barely a mention- but in which I am a part.

The power of story

I believe in Literature. I have friends who refuse to read fiction- often because of reasons such as “it’s not real” or “I don’t have time for fiction.” Each of them has a reason that resonates with them, and which I will never understand.

I believe in fiction.

Fiction is what makes us human, because it gives us the opportunity to connect with another character, in another story- and that character is always ourselves. We may be reading about Harry Potter, Scarlet O’Hara, or John Grady, but we are relating to the characters within those characters that touch us- we’re relating to the parts that are ourselves.

We can’t do this so well in day to day life. We can empathize, we can relate- but not in the same way- because we don’t have the unbiased connection we do with fiction. I bring my story into every interaction that I have with another human- and every other human brings their story. Each of us interacts with others dominated by our own history, and that history illuminates, but it also clouds, the interaction.

It illuminates it, because we come together and speak, feel, move, and touch one another. But it clouds it because we can never truly be within the thoughts of another- their thoughts are within themselves, our thoughts are within ourselves. And often, when our own thoughts are within, they are there without even us knowing them. We guard them from others, and from ourselves, and this clouds us.

Fear, desire, love, hate. Agenda.

Clouds.

But fiction is different. We relate to characters in fiction, we often become characters in fiction, but those characters carry no thoughts but those we see. We hear the thoughts of those characters, we see them, we feel them.¹

Literature is a space to interact with another story, and to interact with the story within ourselves. Reading literature, we read the thoughts and feelings of another, and reading them, we can more deeply connect with the thoughts and feelings of ourselves.

Literature is a space where we can see the fears of another, from within another, and relate to those same fears in ourselves. Literature is the space where we can see the dark thoughts, or the happy thoughts, or the scary thoughts of another story- another human. We hear those thoughts in our own head, understand them in our own story, and feel- and know- that we are not alone.

Literature is not about reading silly stories that are not true. Literature is a place we can go to be ourselves, to relate to ourselves, to understand ourselves, and to remove the clouds from our own thoughts. This is important, because, until we remove those clouds from ourselves- until we learn to relate to ourselves, to understand ourselves, to believe in and to trust ourselves- we can never truly relate to another.

Literature isn’t a silly way to escape into a fictional life- literature is a way to be a better person. Not the way, certainly, but a way most assuredly. A way to be a better person, a better story- a better human- in this, our, life.

The Dark Side

I love writing stories, because I truly love being a story. I love being a major character in other stories, I love being a minor character in stories. I love being less than a bit part in stories that I’ll never know. I feel good when I am little more than a smile that I cast to a child on a lawn while passing a house that I’ll never visit. A passing stranger in a story I’ll never know is a role that I am more than happy to play.

I love stories, I love being a story, because I love being human.

Loving being a story makes me truly love writing stories- and the most powerful part of writing a story, is that someone else will read it.

I want others to read my stories. I want others to hear my thoughts, to feel my thoughts, to see my fears, and my hopes, my scary thoughts and my happy thoughts. I want others to realize that I have hope, but I also want others to know that I have darkness. I want them to read my stories, and relate to the same fears within their own story.

I want them to know that they are not alone.

But there’s a dark side to story telling.²

The dark side is this: A happy story is often a boring one.

We read stories, but we most often read them for conflict. A story where a happy person wakes up and has happy things happen to them all day is, well, really boring. Why is this? Honestly, I don’t know, but I suspect that it’s because we don’t need help relating to the happiness in other stories- we don’t need help knowing that, when we are happy, we are normal- that we aren’t alone.

We need that help when we have fear, when we have pain. That is the time we need to feel connected to other humans, to other stories. So we seek the stories that have conflict, and in that conflict, we know that our conflict is normal, that it’s alright, that we’re okay.

We know that we’re not alone.

Coda

So, this is the dark side of literature. That it’s vital, that it’s important, but that to be anything but boring, it must be difficult, it must be rich with conflict, it must be traumatic. It is that which we connect with.

And it is that which I, admittedly, often use as my base. When I write, I often take a minor itch and cut it open into a wound and then rub it raw with the claws of uncentered analysis to show the painful bloody pulp beneath. Why? Conflict. Which sounds more interesting:

1. I had a minor itch, so I scratched it and moved on.
2. The pain from this festering wound gnaws at my very consciousness, threatening to sap my will to go on.

Come on, number one is basically a waste of your time as a reader. Number two, however, has you already questioning. And that’s the dark side. Embellishment, exaggeration, emphasis. Conflict. To put it bluntly, that shit sells baby!

Writing is a balancing act. On one side is the need to tell a story that is true- by whatever definition “true” holds in the story. On the other side is the need to exaggerate, eliminate, or modify all the boring parts so they don’t sap the reader’s will to go on.

Sometimes, I’m good at that. Sometimes, I’m not.

Unfortunately, when I’m not good, I sometimes pay an unintended price.

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1. Some say that biographies and autobiographies fill this in the non-fiction realm, but I submit that those are filled with as many, if not more, clouds [↩]
2. Honestly, I think it’s a wonderful side, but the most wonderful tale often has a darkness that moves the plot. [↩]