Things We Don’t Mean

I wish I’d learned to play the piano

I wish I hadn’t quit ballet

I wish I hadn’t gotten bangs in sixth grade

But we all do things we don’t mean

I wish I spent more time with my grandparents

I wish I’d stood up for that boy

I wish I hadn’t eaten so much pasta for dinner

But we all do things we don’t mean

I wish I hadn’t cried in the school bathroom

I wish I’d studied for that Iliad test today

I wish I’d gone to bed an hour ago

But we all do things we don’t mean

I wish I hadn’t gotten paint on my favorite shoes

I wish I’d sold more fundraiser cookbooks

I wish I hadn’t shot my mom with a nerf dart

But we all do things we don’t mean

I wish I hadn’t sat in a fire ant bed

I wish I hadn’t gotten two cavities

I wish I hadn’t bought an Enrique Iglesias song

But we all do things we don’t mean

The Titanic didn’t mean to sink

And the Hindenburg didn’t mean to blow

And I didn’t mean to shatter my phone screen

But we all do things we don’t mean

Firefly didn’t mean to get cancelled

And Doctor Who didn’t mean to go downhill*

And I didn’t mean to leave my essay at home

But we all do things we don’t mean

Minions didn’t mean to be annoying

And Icarus didn’t mean to fly into the sun

And I didn’t mean to forget my uncle’s birthday

But we all do things we don’t mean

But that time I slapped my dentist

Back when I was three

That, that is one thing I did mean to do

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*looking at you, Moffat 

**I now realize a better name for this would’ve been “#noregrets” so #yesregrets on missing that opportunity 

The Story Around Us

I recently finished reading (and by reading I mean skimming) my summer reading assignment book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I did learn a few things about reading (which is ironic because I only read every fifth page) like how to understand symbols and how to better analyze texts. But one thing in that book really grabbed my attention, and that is this: there’s only one story. As the author, Thomas C. Foster, explains, “There is only one story. Ever. One. It’s always been going on and it’s everywhere around us and every story you’ve ever read or heard or watched is part of it…stories grow out of other stories, poems out of other poems.” And I took this to mean that there is a single, omnipresent, spirit-like story floating around us. And that just seemed really cool to me. I like to imagine it this way: when I write, I am plucking the words for my story out of the air, out of the story around me. My stories are just part of the much larger One Story. This of course goes along with the theory that there is no such thing as a wholly original work of literature. Every writer has been influenced and inspired by other writings. Every sentence you write may have already been written by someone else. But that’s ok, there’s no way around it. As long as you aren’t intentionally plagiarizing someone else’s work.

So then you wonder: how can I be unique and creative if there’s only one story? And if you’re asking that, you’re not getting it. You can still be creative and unique while having been influenced by other works. Literature, as far as I see it, is less a garden of separated flower beds and more a daisy chain of works that grow out of each other.

For instance, when you create a character, you are able to create that character because of all the other characters you’ve ever read about. Maybe you want your character to be curious like Alice. Or have a prominent physical characteristic like Harry Potter’s scar. Or maybe you don’t want your character to have any resemblance to Harry at all. Negative influence is still influence.

But back to my point of the One Story. This Story is constantly moving and flowing through us. When we read literature, or listen to music, or write a poem, we glimpse a piece of that Story. It bears a resemblance to the relationship of our lives to the universe. The universe is everywhere around us, so much bigger than ourselves. And yet our lives are a piece of the universe that we have the privilege of seeing. Going along with this idea, you could say that an author is like a translator for the universe, taking what the universe has to say with the One Story and putting it into words so that us humans can understand it. It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?