Cutting loose from the strings
“Find out what each character cares most about in the world because then you will have discovered what is at stake.”
I love character driven writing. You can feel the difference when something comes from the characters and when they are merely puppets in a plot. It’s the main reason I do not read a lot of mystery novels anymore. I consumed them like popcorn as a child, and then, one day found them to be completely unsatisfying. I have a few mystery authors that I have found to fairly reliably stick to their characters and allow the mystery to arise from their inner workings, but even they have about one book in three that is clearly there to meet a deadline and then I have to watch my beloved characters dance to the wrong tune in order to satisfy the masses.
And I think, what about me? Not, could I write something like that, but do I live like that?
What do I care most about in the world, and am I living it, or am I being yanked around by the strings of society?
I think that many of us spend a lot of our life being marionettes. We look at a goal that fits into the acceptable parameters of what the world tells us we should be and then we try to live the life that fits that goal.
I’ve never done well at that. There have been a few times that I’ve broken my strings. When I was a Freshman in college and was told I needed to sign up for my practicum without having taken a single education course. I promptly quit the difficult to get into education program I was supposed to be so privileged to have joined and became a lowly English major. When I didn’t know what to do with my life after college, I turned down the offer of a presidential scholarship to grad school to backpack in Europe. When I quit my pastry chef job to go back to the Bagel shop I worked at through school because of the creepy kitchen dynamic.
Everytime I broke the strings, I would, of course, find myself flailing. There’s backlash to breaking your strings. Other people, still bound, will try to drag you in line, wrap you up in theirs. But, as I look back, everytime I broke the strings, opportunities I would not have had came my way. Breaking away from the education department left me time for writing class and theater experiences. Avoiding grad school at the time, I am convinced, saved me from an early burn out and allowed me to see the world in a new way. When I took that step back down the ladder, I got offered a much better job by one of my regulars on my first day back.
Sometimes the strings suck you back. Or maybe there are just paths that you are meant to be on with or without puppeteering. After traveling, literally the day after I got back, an amazing friend got me into a temp job in a high school where I had applied to teach theater. Through that gig, I got the theater job and on the first day of school they ended up asking me to teach English as well. And there I was, even though I had refused that early practicum, even though I bucked the strings and the system.
Foolishly, this is where I let myself be harnessed back into my strings. Or rather the day an irate father showed up at student teacher conferences three and a half weeks into my teaching career demanding to see my curriculum for the year. He was notorious among the teaching and guidance staff. I had been warned by both administrative assistants and the student’s guidance counselor that he was coming in to meet with me. He wafted in, reeking of bad cologne and entitlement. His tone was immediately loud and accusatory. I was too young, too inexperienced to be teaching and who did I think I was to give his kid less than a B? Where were my credentials, my curriculum and unit plans?
I held firm under the diatribe, despite the fact that his cologne was making me dizzy, and simply told the truth. I had no education background. I had never made a curriculum or a unit plan, and that I had been given less than 24 hours notice to take over this class of 8 football players because he and some other parents had not wanted their sons to have the tough teacher. That sometimes when you don’t want the veteran teacher with 30+ years of experience and no tolerance for bullshit you get the new kid without a clue…who still has no tolerance for bullshit. I explained to him that while his kid might be as brilliant as he claimed, I had no way of knowing because the work he turned in was half completed and his participation in class was surly at best as he seemed to have something of a problem seeing women as authority figures.
“Huh,” he said. Most of his bluster was gone, though the cloud of perfume remained. Then without the slightest trace of irony. “I wonder where he gets that from.”
But, I have to confess, that was the moment that things shifted as I tried to fall in line with what was expected. I gave in to the strings, to the horrible educational advice to not smile until Christmas, to toughen up, to be a firmer authority since I looked younger than some of my students. I missed out completely on the teacher that I could have been by listening to people tell me the teacher that I should be. That is truly my biggest regret.
And now here I am. Stringless again, and a little lost. Trying to figure out after all these years, what is the most important thing in the world to me. I want to say, friends and family. We all want that to be the most important thing, but that wouldn’t be authentic of me to say.
Authenticity? Maybe. I’d rather be authentic than successful in the financial sense of the word. I’d rather make waves that put up with toxic stagnation. I’d rather follow my heart than follow what society says I should do.
But there’s got to be more to it than that, I think. I want to make a difference, even if it is just in small ways. I want to bring more kindness into the world. True kindness, not niceties. I want to help people find their voice, their path, in a world without strings. It’s messy out here. Pinnochio didn’t have it easy. But it’s the only way to find out how to become real.