I think I've lived my life trying to make the perfect novel.
Let me explain. For the last twenty years or so, I've been into reading [it can be argued at least 16, at any rate] and into writing for fourteen years or so. Granted I have a much bigger repertoire of what I've read versus what I've actually non-academically written, but I'm always making stories in my head. Or after I read a book, I think of different ways the characters could have gotten from point C to point D. I'll even watch the news and wonder about the people who are being talked about: why drove the man to walk down the street at the time he got shot? Where was he headed? Was it worth it? I'll even come up with stories about bacterium and advances in science. Stories surround us everywhere. Everybody has a story, is in their story. Every place has a story, or is involved in many stories. Being out in the world, which can sometimes be an irritating experience, at least gives me solace that I'm in a story. While walking down a street, in essence I'm walking down a huge library of many different stories.
I think it's that kind of thinking that has fueled a fair amount of my actions. Since I learnt what it meant, I considered myself a bit of a Romantic. I tried to live that lifestyle, but I found it to be too irrational and not in line with what I wanted in life. It's so distracting in many ways to try to be a character in your own story. Yes, it's empowering, but it most be wondered what the origins of your actions really are. Are you doing what you want because it seems to fit the kind of character you're playing in the story you want to be in, or do you actually want to do it?
I can name so many decisions I've made that were because I thought it would fit the character I wanted to be. Most were inconsequential, like what I wore, who I hung out with for a period of time [which can also be more serious, more on that later], what I ate, my exercise routine... But some of them were pretty important, like the people I hung out with [*cough* or dated *cough*]. It's one thing to be a bibliophile, it's quite another to manufacture a life based around the kind of character you want to be.
I think [/hope for the sake of today's midterm] that Booker T. Washington's [known as BTW in my American Lit. class] understanding of double consciousness as I understood it plays a huge part in this thought process. A double consciousness is something that humans do--we split ourselves in two: one is who we really, honestly are and the other is a manufactured facade to present to the rest of the world and be judged. Booker T. Washington was outwardly observed for most of his life as a black man, many would acquiesce to his intellect, but there were few who could see past the color of his skin and see the true genius, the true thinker under his skin color.
I don't think skin color is AS big of a deal now as it was then [it could be argued, but this post isn't about race] but truly the image we present to be judged usually isn't the same as what is actually inside us. It doesn't just fall to our looks, even though that is a frustrating barrier for myself sometimes. A lot of times, our actions are different than how we actually feel, because we feel pressure from somewhere [like perhaps an obscure love of books, or society] to act in a certain manner. I wonder if we stripped that aside and actually did what we wanted [within an average moral system] how different our lives would be?
Maybe if life was a book I could make some sense of it.
