The Rules of the Story

A little over a week ago, the younger brother of one of my best friends was killed in a hit-and-run accident. From what I know so far, my friend's brother was out on his motorcycle when someone plowed into him at high speed, and then drove off. No rhyme. No reason. It just...happened. On the one hand, it's not been easy being there for my friend. Death is always hard to deal with. A sudden death like this pokes at some of the stuff about my wife's death, which had seemed to come from out of nowhere as well. And yet, I'm glad I've been able to be someone he can talk to, can safely vent to. I remember having the thoughts come up I wasn't sure I could share with anyone else, worrying about how they might react. I also remember how much of a relief it was to be able to say those things out loud to someone who wouldn't get critical or judgmental or try to tell me what I should do or think. Far too often, it's underestimated just how much having someone willing to accept you can mean, especially at times like that.

One of the things he mentioned that has been hard for him is the idea that some of the rules got violated. I'd written about that before, but there was a different spin that came to me about it. See, most of who we think we are is the story we create for ourselves. We don't recall the past exactly. We turn it into a story so it can be understood and encoded and so other events can be put into context and assimilated into it. The same's true with the future. We make up a story about how we think it's supposed to go...or sometimes how we're afraid it's going to go. Either way, we understand the past and the future as our story.

It's a story in which we're the hero. Oh, sure, we have plenty of people around us that we look up to and respect and want to be like. We talk about them being heroes to us. But, in our own stories, we are the hero...period. As we grow up, we learn certain expectations of how the story is supposed to go. Sometimes we're clear on them, and sometimes they're lurking in the shadows of our minds, hidden yet still holding tremendous sway on how we understand events and expect them to unfold. For example, I don't know anyone who has the rule/expectation that when we get married, it's supposed to be good for a couple years, then go downhill, and then one of us bails out so we can go find someone else. That's not the rule...at least not for marriage. Same with having kids. Nobody figures when they have a child that the rule is they'll be happy and healthy and then struck down by an accident or illness after 15 or 25 or 45 years. That's not the rule we learned.

When something huge like this happens and violates the rules, it shakes the very foundation of how we understand ourselves, our lives, and reality. All of a sudden, the things that we were so confident of, often to the point of never before having considered they might not be true, lose that immortal credibility. It's like seeing one who we thought of as a god suddenly dropped to his knees, whining and drooling from a sharp kick to the ol' family jewels. Sure, he might get back up and prevail, but the belief in the invulnerability of that god's been shaken. Or like seeing the sun suddenly pop up in the west and zip across the sky to set in the north. Even if it only happens once, it takes an idea that'd been so solid as to make the hardest rock look like heated marshmallow and puts a crack into it. And it brings up a hideous question:  HOW MANY OTHER RULES AREN'T QUITE SO?

For me, it's shaken a lot of those things up. The one that comes immediately to mind relates to getting married again. How do I know she won't leave me again, whether it's for someone else or by ending her life? How do I know that, even if I put everything I can into making the relationship work well, that she will do the same? The simple answer, which still sometimes makes me feel sick, is this: I. DON'T. KNOW.

The only rules I can look to that seem that solid anymore are the ones I choose for myself. What kind of man do I want to be? How do I want to treat others? How do I handle my mistakes? What do I choose to believe? What do I hold to be important? That's about it. The rest have fallen prey to Heisenberg, to a greater or lesser extent they hold uncertainty to them.

In the book Escape From Hell, the story is an extension of a re-telling of Dante's inferno. This time, the main character Alan isn't the one being guided out. He's the one who's gone back to try to guide others out. On the way, he's confronted by doubts about who he was, how he'd judged others, whether or not he was making a difference. The only rule he was able to hold to was needing to find out if it was true that anyone could get out of Hell. Not that everyone should get out or deserved to get out. Just that they could, if they were willing to do and change what they had to. Along the way, there were heartbreaking losses of those who were willing to struggle free of their torments, only to fall prey to other situations that dragged them in and held them bound just as firmly, if not moreso. In the end, it came down to his own rule for himself, that he would stay to find out if it was true that any soul could be redeemed...if willing.

I still find myself, my thinking, swayed by the old rules. They push on how I SHOULD look at things, how I SHOULD expect them to go. It's scary to have to remind myself that those old rules aren't the bedrock principles I'd believed them to be. And yet I can't shake the feeling that, if I don't release my tendency to clutch at and cling to them, they'll keep me bound in my own Hell. Whether made of velvet or steel, chains are still chains.

And I want to be free.