This life we live

26 March 2011

What a strange and wonderful journey we are on. It is a narrative—a journey from birth to death—in which we are the protagonist in our own life's story. This life has to do with our integrity as people, with our love for others, with our sense of humour; with the drama of our existence, with insight into the complexity of existence. In this narrative there is character development, a protagonist, an antagonist, a foil, and psychological and spiritual depth found in symbol, archetype, imagery, setting and foreshadowing, as well as in ambiguity, irony and paradox. No wonder people love a good narrative, a good story, even a good myth; it is at the basis of existence.

Margaret Laurence writes in her novel, A Jest of God, that the more narrowly self-conscious we are the less connected we are to other people. The jest of God is just this: to be consumed with our own ego denies us an awareness of the unself-conscious beauty of life in which there is connection to other people. Rachel Cameron, the protagonist of Laurence's novel, realizes that "to be wise you must be a fool first." She learns to live with contradiction and ambiguity, and to accept the anxiety that comes with this awareness. She affirms life, she does not retreat into the past but says "yes" to new experiences and an unknown future that awaits her.

Over the years, we move relentlessly to the resolution of life's drama which is the narrative of our existence. At the end, when we die, it would be good if we could say that it's been an exciting life, a life worth living, a life in which we have fulfilled our potential and our destiny. All art is vision or it's just a repetition of the past.