In the past sixty-seven days, I’ve heard repeated the admonition to reach out in our time of isolation to encourage others. Still learning to build healthy boundaries, I’m almost hyperaware of things that rub me wrong. And from the beginning, I found myself slightly irritated by this mantra of “encourage others.” It seemed to assume two things: 1. That Others needed encouraging and 2. That even though we were in the same situation, the encouragers didn’t need to put their own oxygen masks on before assisting the Others.
That irritation grew as I started getting encouraging messages from people. I continued monitoring my reactions, gathering a pile of puzzle pieces, not quite sure what picture they would create. Why did I feel completely encouraged when a friend I rarely text sent me a “Hey, I miss you. Hope you’re doing well” message, but I felt like a squashed bug when someone messaged me that she was praying for me and included three verses on trusting God? A message clearly designed to encourage me didn’t, while a brief chat conversation with an acquaintance about how many days I had been inside left me uplifted. Then this weekend, Brene Brown gave me the linchpin, and the puzzle pieces fit into place. Explaining the difference between sympathy and empathy, Brown uses the example of falling into a pit. Someone with sympathy stares down at you, acknowledges that you’re in a pit, and moves on. Someone with empathy see you in the pit and joins you there. Sympathy puts you in a position of weakness while assuming its own position of strength. Empathy connects you to those outside the pit which ultimately helps you out of the hole. The truly encouraging messages I’ve received are just normal connections with people--empathy. We talk at the already established closeness of the relationship. The messages have not presumed a lack in me, a need for encouragement, a struggle on my part the way that the “encouraging messages” have. Rather the messages referenced our past normal interactions or, better yet, engaged me in conversation. C. S. Lewis talks about the skeptic always seeing through things, forgetting that the point of seeing through things is to see something: we look through the window to see the garden (or, in my case, my neighbors in my isolation). The window is for looking through. In the many hours I’ve stared through my window in the past two months, I look at the window only when it needs to be cleaned. Looking at the window defeats the purpose of its windowness. I think that’s the problem with this push to encourage others. So focused on the window of encouraging, we forget its nature. We send verses to address the presumed (or projected) struggles of others without connecting with the person, who may or may not be in a deep hole. By focusing on the goal of encouraging, we miss the target. Encouragement—empathy—comes through connection. Connection comes from sharing, not wisdom from a stable position above the pit, but rather sharing yourself. Connection comes from asking sincerely “How’s it going?” and accepting the answer even if it’s not what you expected. Connection could even come from admitting your own position in the deep hole. Truly in the past sixty-seven days, the more encouraging messages I’ve gotten were “Hey, missing you on another Thursday. Hope you’re doing well.” Or better yet the continuation of an ongoing conversation, “Hey, I just finished that book you recommended. It was awesome!”
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Balance—that ever so elusive goal. I struggle with overwork and overcorrect into laziness. I accept criticism that I am too opinionated and overcorrect into having no opinions about anything. The pendulum swings from talking too much to not talking at all, from being independent to being overly dependent, from too open to too aloof. Exhausted, I glare at the gauntlet of teeter-totters and wonder why it’s so hard.
A friend suggested that the secret isn’t balance at all. It’s alignment. When working on a balance pose in yoga, I choose a mark in the room to focus on: a drishti. The fixed point doesn’t move as I bob around like a weeble-wobble. As I focus on the drishti, I become more balanced, steadier, even stable. When I aim for balance itself, I fall, but when I focus on something that never wavers, it creates alignment in me, and I become balanced. Instead of trying to hover between overwork and laziness, I could focus on the only One is permanent and unchanging. For a while, I was satisfied with my friend’s idea. Alignment sounds saner than balance. But it still leaves a remarkably heavy burden on my shoulders. And as I fail at aligning myself with Him just as much as I fail at balance, I find myself toying with another idea coalescing from many books I happened to be reading simultaneously. We all are made with different fundamental temperaments, grow up in different home cultures, and are the products of different larger cultures, so it is no wonder that parts of Scripture resonate with some of us more than others. Collin Hansen, the author of Blind Spots, says that is how we react to Christ as well. Some of us love the Christ who is compassionate; others are strengthened by His courage; others are consumed by His commission. At first, I cataloged this as another area in which I needed to seek balance, almost missing the author’s point. But then Jen Wilkin reminded me in None Like Him that I am not omniscient; my mind has limits. I cannot successfully always remember that my Messiah is both courageous and compassionate, let alone always remember also that He commissioned His followers to a great work. In Misreading the Scripture through Western Eyes, the authors remind us that for generations, reading the Scriptures was primarily a community or family activity, not the private, solitary activity it is today. That reminder nudged me to think about the community’s role in my balance or alignment. In both Blind Spots and Misreading the Scriptures, the authors encourage us to remember other ways of thinking through interacting with others. Instead of surrounding myself with only close friends who see the compassionate Western Christ, which reinforces that skew, I could engage with friends who see His courage, embrace His commission, and understand what the Scriptures look like in another culture. This idea especially reinforces Drs. Cloud and Townsend’s premise that having multiple strong relationships is key to being healthy and forming new relationships. One good friend cannot give me all the perspective missing from my view. One good friend is just as limited as I in maintaining balance and remembering the manifold wisdom of God. There’s an interesting study by Wenger on memories of couples in close relationships. Over time, in the relationship, the couple divide the labor of remembering in the same way they divide household chores, except this division is done tacitly. The result of the study demonstrated that this transactive memory “is greater than either of the individual memories.” With transactive memory, members of a group do not need to remember every detail. The husband and wife do not both need to save in their memory which cupboard the Windex is in, which road the doctor’s office is on, or the details of that funny story that eases awkward moments at dinner parties. Transactive memory is reminiscent of Paul’s analogy of the Body. As the Hands appeal to the group about a need, a way to show His love to others, the Mind considers the cost, the Mouth shares Truth, the Muscles give strength and courage. The Hands don’t carry the burden of all the great work; the Hands do what Hands do. We use that analogy when it comes to actual service at church: who should teach, who should greet, who should never help in the nursery. But what if transactive memory is how the Body is supposed to work with knowledge as well? As we come together, we each bring the part of the Scripture that resonates with us, that has become engrafted and in coming together, we remind each other of the parts we forget. We each have something to offer and something to receive. What if the answer isn’t a never-ending struggle for internal alignment or personal balance? Maybe the answer is honest, loving connection to a varied group, a Body. Alone, I will forget parts of Who He is and what He asks of me. Together, we can remember far more and do what He asks of us. Teachers, both real and fictional ones, often work to create school cultures devoid of cruel teasing. In many ways, teasing is rejection, which we try to shelter our students from. But lately, dealing with junior highers contemplating the adults they will become, I’ve been mulling over whether we threw a baby out with the bathwater when we decided that rejection and teasing were completely bad. We laud difference so much in our topsy-turvy Enlightened culture that we have stopped considering whether the differences that students are teased for are worth defending.
Take for example a student teased for enjoying books. People questioning his decision should cause him to question his decision. Are they teasing him because he reads books, or because he traps people into listening to him recount the minutiae of a complicated plot? (Sorry for doing that repeatedly, Dad.) Reading is great, but having someone challenge him about it is also good, even if just causing him to establish what role books have in his life. Or what about the student who chews with her mouth open? Sweet, “nice” classmates will merely avoid her; others might complain about having to sit across from her without explaining why they don’t want to. Both behaviors will make her feel bad in the moment, but her poor table manners can alienate her if it persists into adulthood. Having a peer teasingly say, “Gross! I don’t want to see that!” once or twice could help her see a need to improve, which could save her from more rejection. People can change these behaviors. I think that’s where we well-meaning teachers lost sight of the issue. Jordan Peterson tells of a species of bird in which the male creates art to court the female. If the female rejects the male, he will destroy his art and improve it until a female accepts him. The bird doesn’t give up after one attempt; the bird doesn’t pout, defend his art, or call everyone else haters. He accepts the rejection and improves because of it. (This process of giving feedback to produce improved work is something we teachers are trained for, incidentally.) Students teasing others about things that they cannot change is wrong; students teasing others about things that they can change is an opportunity for growth, just like the bird’s art getting rejected, just a student getting a low score on a quiz. We could brush the rejection aside and assure the teased student that he is better than the bullies. Or we could talk with all students involved about why one group thinks the behavior is teasable and whether the teased student thinks that behavior is worth keeping in the face of rejection. If it is worth keeping, the discussion will encourage him and may challenge naysayers’ thinking. Last week, my roommate told me about her evening, which gave me a hint to my students’ future. She had gone to a party where a mutual friend tried to set her with a friend. As we hashed out the night, I asked, “Do you think you’ll see this—wait, is he a man or a boy-man?” Perhaps an odd question unless you, like my roommate and I, are a woman who has dated in the adultescence era. Even though the guy in question was a man, the question prompted a continuation of an earlier conversation: why are women just supposed to accept that many guys don’t become men until they are married with kids? Every church I have ever attended has a men’s group. Do they really just talk about the Bible and never apply it to practical moments of telling the boy-men how to become men? Do the older men really never come alongside the younger men and guide them into socially appropriate interaction? And if not, why aren’t they? Students check each other’s behavior through teasing. Adults seem less sure about how to address social ineptness. Most often, we ignore it, avoid the person, or complain about it to another person. A truly brazen person might tease the socially awkward person, but then reduce the truth by claiming it’s just a joke. A student doing something not normal in that social setting will have someone ask, “What are you doing? with the subtext of “That’s weird. Are you sure you want to do that?” I don’t think adults should behave like students, but I wonder what we are missing that we have so many stuck in adultescence. I remember my mother when, as a child, I hovered on the edges of her conversations, telling me to go away. She taught me that my behavior was not polite: either join the conversation or leave, but don’t stand there creepily watching others have a conversation. It’s easy to do that with your child; it’s hard to do that with a peer. But unless we step up and kindly say, “That’s not okay; try this instead,” they won’t have opportunity to learn. They aren’t learning from rejection. And unless we guide our students through teasing and rejection, they will become the socially awkward of the future. Man was made in God’s image. And God took man’s form to be God with Us. Perhaps an odd topic to meditate on in December, but I have been thinking this month on the nature of God. I realized how much I was believing a “Christian myth”—a lie that sounds Biblical but is still a lie. In response to that lie, I have been focusing on Truth: Who is God? And how have I been made in His image?
God, a distinct entity, states clearly His likes and dislikes, what He will accept and not accept, and how He will respond to things He will not accept. He does not force others to follow His way; He merely invites them to and states the consequences if they cross His boundaries. Complete in Himself, He still enjoys relationships. This isn’t astounding. All of Scripture communicates these ideas. But what I just realized was that since I am made in that image, those things (boundaries) are good for me, too. Somehow, I started believing the lie that taking care of my own needs was selfish. After all, love sacrifices, and love should care more about others than self. The model for sacrificial love is God: the Father loved us so much that He sacrificed His Son; the Son loved us so much that He sacrificed Himself. But, note the verb tense: not sacrifices. Sacrificed. Yes, Christ came, becoming man, but He was still fully God. His sense of Who He was never changed. He did not, nor does not, change for His loved ones. His likes and dislikes stay the same. His position changed temporarily (heaven for earth), but His character does not waver. His actions changed temporarily (sleeping, living as a human), but His boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable remain steadfast. Love came down to die, but He lived before dying. He did not lead a life of negating every need, emotion, and opinion in the name of sacrificial love. That isn’t living. A person with no needs, desires, emotions, or opinions—that person cannot love anyone because that person is dead. I believed that sacrificial love was constantly denying myself for others. But, my rational mind cried out, where is the line? I could not sustain a lifetime of sacrificing all of me. Christ sacrificed once; His public ministry, although physically taxing, lasted only three years. How could I, a mere mortal, expect to last longer than God with Us? How could I distinguish between others’ needs and others’ wants? When I voiced concerns about knowing where the line was, I heard criticism about being too used to getting my own way and that if I spent more time serving others, then I would feel better. So, I continued to act on those lies, ignoring my physical comfort for someone else (because love sacrifices), ignoring my true needs for someone else (because love sacrifices), and denying my own desires (because love seeks not its own). With no needs or desires, I felt like I ceased to be. Mercifully, not all my relationships succumbed to these lies. I noticed that in these relationships I was wholly myself, a glaring contrast to the fragmented shadow I was in others. Desperate to be whole again, I turned to the model of sacrificial love. Who is this God Who can sacrifice Himself and not lose Himself? When did He sacrifice? What did He sacrifice? Christ did “what we could not do for ourselves,” I read one day and then read it again. “Denying ourselves to do for others what they cannot do for themselves is showing the sacrificial love of Christ. This is what Christ did for us. . . . he saved us.” All this time, I was sacrificing myself for others’ whims, things they could get without my sacrifice. Looking at what Christ (and His followers) sacrificed for added more clarity: they sacrificed most often for the sake of the gospel. Especially around the holidays, I sacrifice time, energy, rest, and money in the name of love, spurred by sweet stories of sacrifice, but I can place a boundary around that sacrifice—what am I sacrificing for? I can still agree with the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge that “mankind [is] my business,” but I can temper that sentiment with my true responsibility to mankind: sacrificing for true needs, sacrificing to point to Christ. When I first started teaching, well-meaning colleagues or students’ parents would ask whether I were going “home” for the summer, meaning my parents’ house, a place I’ve never lived since they moved when I was in college. Because I’m single, the other adults in my life do not view me as “home” even after living in the same city for nearly a decade.
As a child, it’s obvious what home is. It’s equally obvious who will share life with you. I knew my siblings would celebrate my eighth birthday with me. I knew they would be there for Christmas and Fourth of July. But, as the youngest child, I watched in confusion as my nuclear family shifted into an extended family. My siblings moved away and celebrated more and more life events with their own growing nuclear families, as it should be. I was left behind wondering how I fit into this picture of family. Eventually, I realized that I was my now own family. I wonder if I should write a parody of the old song “I’m My Own Grandpa.” As a single adult, I celebrate most mile-markers alone or with an ever-changing circle of available friends. I have wonderful friendships, many of which have lasted since childhood or college. But even those have shifted as well as my friends have moved away, married, and had children. I woke up this morning homesick, not for a place or even a time, but for an idea: I miss having built-in people to celebrate milestones with. In the nuclear family or younger single friendships, invitations and planning are not necessary; attendance is a given. I wasn’t sent an invitation to my brother’s graduation or my sister’s wedding. It was a given that I’d be there. My friend Joy didn’t need a specific invitation to my high school graduation or even any of my high school plays or recitals. It was a given that she’d be there. Now, their lives are no longer closely tied to mine; it takes more planning and travel to do life together. Certainly, if I had invited people to join me for my thirtieth birthday, people would have come. If I had invited people to attend graduation when I finished my masters, people would have come. But it wasn’t a given. And I had invitations to join other families for major holidays, but those were pity invites, not a given. Here I am on the cusp of another one of those big milestones, and I wonder who will share in this moment with me. I don’t doubt my friend’s and family’s love. But I know their availability is limited. I know they will be happy for me and wish me well even though they can’t celebrate with me. So, I’m homesick for a future time and place in which my relationships will no longer shift and change, when I will be forever with my Family, and when we will be done with life’s milestones and simply enjoy eternity together. I started growing up this week. Just like that. After years of thinking that I was an adult because I paid my own bills, took my car to the mechanic when it was sick—er, broken, and made my own holiday meals, I crossed a threshold into maturity that I didn’t even know was there.
I am an honest person, but I struggle telling the truth. Perhaps that sounds like an oxymoron. But I view it more as a paradox. The words I speak are true, so I am honest. But there are many words I do not speak. I can be completely honest chatting with friends while never admitting the hidden fear that I think I’m not welcome. I am completely honest when I end a long-distance phone call with “I miss you” without adding the secret desire that I want to come for a visit. And I can have a truthful conversation about my latest news without admitting that I was hurt by a thoughtless comment. These hidden fears and secret desires have colored all but my closest relationships. I’ve held them inside. After all, I can’t be rejected if I never ask. Part of me fears direct questions because I will answer them honestly. And part of me longs for someone to ask them, to open the door let those hidden fears escape. Yet, I’ve developed skill in answering questions without answer questions, which means these insecurities continue to fester. Some questions I would rather avoid. My mom has a talent in asking about the very things I don’t want her to worry about. This week I am going on vacation; I coached myself to volunteer the information that while on vacation I would see a guy that I was Talking to. But I got as far as announcing my upcoming trip before Mom asked where I was staying. Yep, a direct question. I froze and said the truth, “A hostel.” Thirty minutes later, while we were still discussing the hostel, I decided not to volunteer information about the guy. That would probably spark an even longer worry for Mom, and I felt nervous enough about the visit without borrowing her worries, too. If our Talking becomes anything more, I can volunteer the information then. So, that was a lot of rambling to get around to my step into growing up this week. I actually acknowledged a desire to visit some people (without getting an invitation from them) that would inconvenience them. I put the idea out there with no strings attached, no ridiculous idealized expectations. Just the truth: I miss you and want to see you. And my happiness and security in the relationship does not matter on whether or not they accept the idea. I know they love me, and I also know that they are human and life is crazy. They can say, “No, that won’t work,” and I’m okay with that. I think taking my car to the mechanic when it’s sick is easier than this part of adulthood. But I’m already thirty. If I just started growing up this week, I’ve got a lot of ground to make up. So lately, I’ve been thinking about doctors. Not because I haven’t had other things to think about, but because I’ve been visiting them. As with most normal routines, it’s not until you experience them in another culture that you realize how much your own culture forms your expectations. For example, my expectation when I go to the dairy section of the grocery store is to be walk up to the shelf, grab a tub of yogurt, and walk away. But now that I enjoy living in a new culture, I am aware of a cultural expectation I was previously blind to: I expect to enjoy silence as I make my yogurt selection. Here, I will dawdle in every other section of the grocery store, delaying my advance into the dairy section as long as possible. Then I summon courage and plunge into a cacophony of sounds as at least ten over-amplified hawkers simultaneously push their products in a space the size of a minivan. Even worse are the days that one tries to be helpful and offers suggestions to me standing six inches from my face while still talking into the microphone. I have no proof to back this claim, but I think most of the country is suffering from hearing loss and that is why all the hawkers’ microphone dials are set to eleven.
But as much fun as the grocery store is, I have been pondering our quaint American ideas on what makes a good doctor. Upon entering the country, I had my immigration physical. I knew it was coming. But it wasn’t until I entered the immigration building that I realized too late that I should have asked questions first. I felt like I was on a weird scavenger hunt. Armed with a beginner translator and a checklist, we (my first-time translator, about fifty unrelated immigrants, and me) wandered the unlit halls of the immigration building, taking tests and getting stickers (okay, fine, signatures) along the way. Perhaps the low point in this bizarre scavenger hunt should have been the urine sample (unlit, sewery smelling bathroom with teeny, tiny test-tubes for the samples, oh, and no soap). But I was still mentally off-balance from my ultrasound. When I found the ultrasound room (and scored a point in my imaginary scavenger hunt), the lab tech grabbed my checklist and pointed to the bed. I lay down. With no greeting or even looking at me, she pointed to my shirt and said, “Off.” When I started to take my shirt off, she said, “No, off.” She meant “up.” She squirted the gel stuff on my and did her test. Then, she dismissed me by throwing one tissue on my stomach and saying, “Go.” I know that the lab tech knew how to do her job, but a huge American part of me felt like she didn’t just because she never looked at me. That’s when I started to wonder why I think my doctor’s care is better if she chats with me first. Her doctoring skill does not change based on her ability to engage in small talk. And then, to compound these thoughts, I started watching House, a tv show predicated on the idea that a complete jerk can be skilled doctor. Between House, my immigration physical, and two different traditional doctors here (one who spoke no English and one with limited English), I’m starting to wonder if interaction is necessary at all in a doctor’s visit. For my first traditional doctor’s visit, I practiced all the words for my symptoms; I was ready. But he didn’t ask me any questions. He told my translator what my symptoms were just by looking at me and checking my pulse. And he was right. So, what I’ve learned about doctor’s visits: looking at the patient is optional, listening to the patient is even more optional, and being polite to the patient really is a waste of time. One of the philosophers (I think it was Nietzsche) noted changes in his writing style when he switched to a new medium (the writing ball). His message and manner started to match the forcefulness needed to use the medium, a forcefulness not needed in the more methodical pen and paper. Today, I'm adapting a new medium, hesitantly aware that it has the power to change my message or at very least my manner of communication. Another change.
Yet, I have been reassured in the past week as I visit my family that in spite of all of these changes, things remain the same, too. My siblings and cousins are grown and have their own families now. But in spite of that, some aspects of our time together will not change. I still heard my uncle call my cousin by his full name (this time as part of his wedding vows instead of a warning). I still saw someone taking forever to take one picture because the subjects in the pictures were perfectly posed (this time, the photographer was my aunt's grandson instead of my aunt). I still enjoyed wonderful sobremesa as our conversations meandered around family updates, theological discussions, good-natured teasing about someone particular tastes, and of course, the amazing bundt cakes and coffee (why is it so natural to discuss food while eating food?). And it was still a refreshing treat. I know that families can be messy and loud and stressful (especially if you are a quiet, opinionated pleaser), but I have an extraordinary gift in a family that is a joy to be with. I can come away from a weekend family get-together (which at this stage in our family is mostly for weddings or funerals) feeling encouraged and refreshed. When God saw man alone in the garden, He said it was not good. And His solution to that aloneness was one of His greatest gifts--family. My first job, Donut World, was my best. And although I have worked at many other places since then, I still expect business to follow the principles that my first boss demonstrated. And every time I am reminded that the business world is not like Donut World, I am startled anew by the difference.
Rule 1: We are Family. As long as we worked well and hard, the store owner Avi treated us like family. When we returned after a semester at college or even vacation, he would greet us with open arms, saying, “Ah, my family is back.” On my first day at Donut World, one of my father’s friends came in for his usual donut and coffee on his way to work. As a brand new member of the Donut World family, I sensed Avi’s fatherly concern as this burly man greeted me warmly. He didn’t relax until I explained that I knew this man from church. Our customers were also part of the family. We knew about each other’s lives and truly cared about each other’s lives. When a co-worker died, Avi wasn’t able to tell me before Shabbat started, so he asked one of our regular customers to stop by the store to tell me the news in person. Similarly, when I graduated from high school, customers and employees alike celebrated that milestone with me with gifts, cards, well-wishes. Avi even blessed me before I left for college. Rule 2: Hard work is rewarded. My sister warned me that at some point during my first day at work, she, Avi, and Georgia (the store manager) would disappear into the backroom on the pretense that they needed to check things in the stock room. What they were really doing was watching me on the camera to see what I did without supervision. I wiped down already clean counters. I checked what needed to be restocked. I started to memorize the menu board. At the end of the day, I already had a pay raise. Avi didn’t give annual pay raises; he rewarded hard work with surprise pay raises and just-because bonuses. (Corporate America with its ten-cent annual raises would learn well from Avi’s method. Why work hard when you are only ever rewarded for surviving another year?) The other rules build on those two rules. Rule 3: How you behave determines how you are treated. If customers didn’t behaved nicely and threatened to take their business elsewhere, Avi sniffed and waved them away, telling us that “we don’t want that kind here.” And even if they became regular customers, they were never part of the family. They didn’t get special treatment by complaining and being rude; in fact, Avi regularly called the police to have those customers removed from the premises. It’s amazing how quickly bullies back down when authority arrives. Rule 4: Serving others is serving yourself. This last rule is really the summary of all of Avi’s business principles and an idea that has been playing in my mind for a while now as I wrestle with Corporate America’s dehumanizing way of structuring business. Working at my current company, a corporate cookie-cutter business whose heads couldn’t care less about the employees on the front lines, has made me realize this rule. My previous manager at this store ran the store into the ground by mishandling funds and helping only high-dollar customers. He paid us just above minimum wage and would steal any commissionable sale from us. By serving himself (and no one else), he lost valuable employees, regular, loyal customers, the community’s good opinions, and ultimately the store. The new manager follows Avi’s rules (as much as corporate bigwigs let him) and serves others, and in doing so, has salvaged the store, gained a positive name in the community, built a loyal customer base, and turned the customers and employees into a family. Hmm, serving others really is the best policy. Wouldn’t it be convenient if we could rehearse each day before it happened? People could get a feel for possible ways to deliver their lines; they would know when to best time their entrances and exits and pick up on cues that they otherwise would miss. It might take some of the spontaneity out of life, but it could also clear up a lot of misunderstandings.
Or, for those who like spontaneity, what if we could hear the soundtrack music for our days? It wouldn’t give away specifics, but it would help us know how we are supposed to respond. Scenario: Guy and Girl are walking down the street at night. A light staccato on the piano lets them know that this is a light-hearted scene and it would be okay if they wanted to dance in the rain. Or a swelling of the orchestra lets them know that this is a romantic climax in their relationship. Or long, menacing tones from the string bass warns the girl to scream and run away. (The other day in class, we were enjoying a discussion during which I periodically soapboxed for a few minutes before releasing the discussion back to the students. Each of my soapboxes was serendipitously accompanied by the music from the neighboring classroom’s movie, the mood of the music perfectly underscoring each my points.) Perhaps, some of you think that even having the soundtrack gives away too much. How about if we at least knew which genre we were in? My friend and I were driving back from a party one night and noticed a side road that neither of us had seen before. Curiosity made us want to turn down the lane, but we didn’t know what genre our evening was in. If it were a horror movie, this was the part of the story that the audience is yelling at us to stay on the main road because they know that an escaped killer is hiding out down this side road and would chase us around the woods (because, naturally, our car would break down and our cell phones would die). But if this were a romantic comedy, our car would still, naturally break down, but it would be right in front of a cottage in which Mr. Right and his best friend lived (even though at first we would inexplicably hate them both). Or, an even better option, if this were fantasy, this side road existed only on this one night and it was a portal to a magical realm in which, of course, one of us was the Chosen One to face the scary bad guys and lead the people into a golden age. So many choices. But, alas, we were not able to rehearse the scene before, heard no soundtrack music, and did not know which genre our evening was, so we continued on our humdrum way home, skipping all possible adventure and misfortune. |
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