My best friend Cindy has a post here about the impulse to put God in a box. The gist is that we (or those of “we” who believe in a God) sometimes decide in advance what sort of message or help he’s supposed to provide and when it doesn’t come in the form we expect, we’re annoyed. Doesn’t God see what we need? Why isn’t God getting his act together?
God, however, remains unimpressed by our efforts to stamp, brief, debrief, classify and analyze him and delivers what he’s going to give us the way he knows is right. I think the same truth (and I’m inclined to agree with her assessment of God) applies to life.
It’s very easy to get a clear idea in our heads of what our life is supposed to be like, or what it’s going to be like in a few years, when we fix things. When we sell the novel. Meet the girl. When we finally get organized and do whatever it is we’re putting off. What’s happening now? Not life. Just the waiting room before we go in and talk with the big guy and get things going the way they’re supposed to be.
Looking back, I spent a depressing amount of time in my twenties with that outlook. Ignoring the stuff that just wasn’t working (jobs mostly) because hey, this wasn’t life, it was the chrysalis from which my life would eventually emerge. Not that there’s anything wrong with looking to the future, but I think I’d have had a lot more fun at times if I’d either pushed harder to change or embraced the parts of my life that were working.
The same conviction I had completely analyzed and boxed my life also led me, at times, to be completely (and erroneously) convinced of my future. A few years ago, I’d pretty much accepted I was never, ever, ever going to get married: Nobody was interested, nobody would ever be interested. As a friend of mine said a couple of months ago, I couldn’t have imagined TYG coming into my life or everything that’s resulted from that.
Personal stuff aside, it occurs to me, in addition, that the urge to put life or God or the universe in a box is also a classic element for fiction.
My One Hand Washes the Other, for example, is about a man with a crystal-clear life plan that’s pretty much dropped out from under him. How far will he go to get it back on track? And is it the track he thought it was?
The same idea crops up in countless romances: The protagonist has his or her eyes clearly set on the perfect mate with the perfect pedigree and bank account, then presto, someone else enters the picture and all the romantic plans go out the window. In non-romantic situations, it can be the guy (or woman) who pursues a quest to destruction or seeks a goal and discovers (or refuses to discover) that she no longer wants it.
Real life does not belong in a box. But fictional characters trying to place their lives in boxes can be wonderful.
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