The Lies Stories Tell Us
Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite authors. His books always seem to deal with themes that I find relatable and interesting. However — an aspect of Vonnegut’s writing that I find most fascinating relates to this slightly obscure idea that: most stories are lies.
Maybe to you that would be obvious — after all, all fiction is lies. But I’m not talking about the content of the stories — I am talking about the perceptions we make as we read or are exposed to the storytelling aspect.
Most stories we read can be graphed on a Good/Bad time chart — where Good/Bad are marked on the y-axis, and time is denoted on the x-axis. Almost all story arcs can be explored in this way — for example, Cinderella starts low on the Bad axis when she is poor and living with her stepsisters, builds itself up on the Good axis when she gets her wish to the palace party, moves slightly down to the Bad axis when the slipper is lost and the night is over, and back to the Good axis when she marries the Prince.
But therein lies the core of the issue — the idea we even have the capacity to define what is Good or Bad. In storytelling, there is this idea that there is an omnipotent God crafting a story, and it can cast judgement on each and every event as being Good or Bad. However, due to the influence of storytelling, at a young age, we are enamoured by the wonder of goodwill and good deeds, and we begin to perceive that something similar should happen to us in our lifetime — that if we are kind and loving and just people, that we too — will experience a linear relationship between increased “Good” events happening to us as time goes on.
If we traverse life with this mindset, we will always end up disappointed. As it is, the Universe does not care about you. And although we may think we have the ability to cast judgements as being Good or Bad, we simply cannot see far enough into the future to adequately assess that. We are not an omnipotent God, and we cannot traverse time and space to see infinitely into the future. We are finite creatures, capable of comprehending infinite thoughts, but are ultimately bound to live in only one moment at a time — the present. And perhaps it doesn’t haunt you — but every day, I wake up, conflicted by this Demon that chases me and runs after me, with it’s constant luring of the Infinite.
Following from this, Life — as represented on a Good/Bad time graph, can only ever adequately be represented as a straight line when we experience it. In our present state, we lack the ability to cast judgements on these events, and the futility of attempting to ascribe a Good/Bad significance on events that affect us will only inevitably lead to disappointment.
Perhaps though — life is not meant to be measured out as an optimization algorithm, where we focus on trying to constantly improve our situation based on individualized constraints.
Perhaps, we need to accept that we just are.
And all we can do, is to trudge forward each and every day. We will stand in the face of time, as absurd heroes, asserting who we are, and realizing that our existence may be meaningless, but perhaps, the beauty in it lies in the ability to choose the things we want to ascribe meaning to.
Every day, without fail, we will awake and rise, and choose to conquer the world both within us and around us…
Or crumble at its feet.
