Existential Teenage Problems and Crappy Kingdoms

Intentional or not, modern parenting prepares kids to reach lofty personal accomplishments in high school, ultimately propelling them towards success in college and beyond. Beyond, though, produces quite a bit of anxiety in most adolescents.  A definite end point with looming unanswerable questions exists for every overly-structured childhood.  Will I get into college?  What kind of college?  What’ll I do after college? Most teenagers go to school, do their homework and avoid thinking about these things because they’re unable to come up with plausible answers.

That’s not even addressing what happens when teenagers fall short of their imagined success.  Motivation, skill, physical health, mental health, intelligence and competition are all variables that get in the way of lofty goals.  Joe Mauer was a monster for his high school baseball team in Saint Paul, and I always wonder about the average high school athlete backing him up and sitting on the bench every season.  What does he do with himself when he realizes his star potential will never be achieved?  

Well, he might end up in one of DC Piersons two novels.  Both of his narrators are suburban males with quite a bit of anxious uncertainty in their lives.  Darren, the narrator in The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To, avoids most of the hard questions I’ve brought up by creating a fictional narrative full of cyborgs, zombies and mechwarriors, which is a great hobby but doesn’t supply much status or extrinsic rewards in high school.  Tom, the narrator in Crap Kingdom, is having a little more success in his school’s theater department but is too distracted by his own thoughts to enjoy it.

Both characters fall short of their perceptions of success and Pierson’s strong characterization unfolds as their disappointment and existential avoidance mixes with awkward teenage development.  Like most teenagers, they can’t see past their present situations because of their inability to realistically imagine the future.  Somehow being on the run with a kid who doesn’t need sleep or traveling to a fantasy kingdom makes more sense than thinking about college.

I think this is why people have such a hard time relating to teenagers.  I can imagine myself fairly accurately in 5 years:  Awesome beard, living in my house, married to my wife and planning for a garden in the Spring.  I’m aware all of those things could change (except for the beard, of course) but I’m also aware they may not.  Ask a 17 year old to imagine himself at 22 and you’ll either get lots of generalities or else a blank stare while he wonders if a lightsaber or flight would help him more in a zombie apocalypse.  Pierson understands this teenage distinction and writes it really well.

I enjoyed the story more in The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To, which is set in high school but written for adults.  It gets a bit fanciful and dark in the third act, but both give Darren’s overall narration a sense of authenticity I appreciated fully after finishing the novel.  Crap Kingdom is a YA novel set in high school that I enjoyed more in the beginning than the end, which probably speaks more to the YA nature of storytelling than anything Pierson could have done differently.

Both narrators do their best to ignore tough existential questions about the eventual death of their childhood but eventually realize the impossibility of infinite avoidance.  They accept the limits of their abilities with varying levels of success.  For Darren, it means he has to leave his fantasy world behind and live in the only one available to him.  For Tom, it means he also has to leave his fantasy world behind and be more open to unexpected deviations in the future (like other fantasy worlds).  Their acceptance of their existential situations gives them the freedom to go forward into adulthood.

Don't be a writer, be a man of God who writes

Playfully smiling in the shade is how we
should all think of contemplative prayer.

Finishing Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain feels like quite an accomplishment.  Dense writing combines with heavy theology combines with my own dislike for memoirs and autobiographies (I rarely care about childhood friends or their parents) might make you think this was a chore to finish.  

In a way, I suppose it had those moments.  The first 2/3rds of the book are spent on Merton’s childhood and as a young adult going to college in New York City.  It’s overly descriptive and focuses on factual happenings.  Merton’s lack of depth either speaks to his own unawareness at the time or his current disinterest in reflecting on past events. This time in his life feels hollow to him as a writer and comes off as shallow to the reader. Brief moments within the shallows, however, find Merton pondering if something greater is out in the world, reminding us of the spiritual depth he’ll soon discover in himself.  

The rapid movement from self-centered intellectual to trappist monk feels a little abrupt, but no more than it did for Merton.  I reread whole chapters in the last third of the book just to keep up with his quickly evolving spirituality and life.

Three things stuck out for me while reading this last section:

1.  Merton’s astonishing sense of self-sacrifice associated with his faith.  Faith through sacrifice isn’t something we hear very often in today’s world. For Merton, a lack of sacrifice meant a lack of meaning. He became Catholic and sought the priesthood not because he loved everything in his life but because he felt unfulfilled with his life. He originally contemplated joining the Franciscans because his personality naturally fit with with their order, but would putting a square peg in a square hole bring him the spiritual satisfaction he craved?

Somehow, sacrificing sex and money didn’t carve enough of him out to make room for God.  Without sacrifice, there could be no spiritual gain for Merton.  Joining the trappists and embracing worldly sacrifice gave Merton the focus he needed to embrace God entirely.

2.   Merton’s writing style changes in the book from factual to meaningful, which is a line I struggle to straddle most days.  I’m a linear thinker (A leads to B leads to C...) and I easily fall into a linear trap when approaching my days.  Seriously, sometimes Kelly comes home, asks me about my day and I relay the order of my day (I went to work, I answered the phone, I wrote some emails) instead of telling her about my day (I’m kind of tired, this conversation really made me think, I’ve been craving breakfast for dinner all day).  Factual vs. emotive  isn’t the right phrasing, but it’s pretty close.  

When Merton hits the last third of his book, his writing goes from relaying information to really wading into heavy topics.  He recognizes his vocation called him to the sudden depth he found himself.  When I’m rooted and healthy, my mind moves to places beyond the daily happenings around me.  I write more.  I exercise more.  I have conversations more often.  A lot of my early life centered on moving linearly from place to place, recognizing an unfulfillment in me but not knowing what to make of it.  I’m not about to join a trappist order (sacrificing sex sounds awful) but I love the path Merton laid out and his ability to express the depth he discovered within his sacrifice.   

3. Most of us, when we imagine trappist monks, we think of priests sitting silently in a room praying endlessly.  In reality, Merton became a farm hand on a functional farm cut off from most of the world.  He learned how to actively pray in order to accomplish his daily chores while remaining in constant contact with God through prayer.  Not at all what he was expecting.

Side Note:  All three of these things happened in the last third of the book.  Seriously, just skim the first 2/3rds.  You won’t miss much.

Kelly knew me for a year before we dated.  Was she waiting and hoping I’d notice her during that year?  Nope.  She actively hated me.  This is a woman who values kindness above all else, and yet managed to tell everyone she knew how much she disliked me. A little full of my own nebulous abilities and an overall belief that I had an internet fueled witty answer to everything kept her at arms reach.  I loved the celebrity that came with being a leader on a small college campus and she hated the ego that came with it.

Fast forward a lot, and now I’m a leader in a small school as a guidance counselor. I came to understand my own pitfalls associated with professional titles and pushed them aside to embrace contemplative simplicity and a career focused on helping others.  Lately, I’ve found myself in situations where a leader is needed and I see the path the leader needs to take.  I’m intimidated not by the challenges this represents but by the possibility of slipping into a linear thinking stratagem that accomplishes a lot but leaves me unfulfilled at the end of the day.

The key, and I think Merton would agree, is to take the path in front of you while embracing the sacrifices needed to maintain a contemplative prayer life.  Contemplative prayer may not make me a great leader, but it’ll help me be a great ‘me’ as I lead.

Overreaching Symbolism!

I’ll be honest:  I was a bad English major in college.  Victorian Poetry, one of my only successful classes, went well because the professor loved sexual symbolism.  That poem about strangulation?  Really a poem about sexual asphyxiation.  Lord of the Rings?  Really Tolkien's take on homosexual relationships as represented by the hobbits.  Sunsets in poems?  Really different forms of ejaculation.

Intro to Poetry was probably my least successful class.  My professor once gave me a 0% for an in class essay where the only written comment in bright red ink read: “No!” Thanks Dr. Finklestein.  

Since leaving Xavier University’s academic world, though, I occasionally like to flex my English major muscle, much to the amusement of my wife who actually was a successful English major.  (By “successful English major” I mean she eventually got a Masters degree in a science and now works in the medical field.)

Anyways, here’s some overreaching symbolism for you concerning the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall.  It seemed like a good way to ease back into blogging for the new year.

I know, I know.  This James Bond movie continued the theme of showing the personal toll a real person would actually experience as an international spy. You know what this movie was actually about though?  Babyboomers.

That’s right, you think it’s a coincidence that Bond and the Rolling Stones premiered the same time and both turned 50 this year?  Both represent different and seemingly contradictory personality qualities of their generation.  One loves blue jeans, rock & roll, rebeling, money and women.  The other loves suits, fancy cars, disobeying orders money and women.  Notice a pattern?  

But Babyboomers fell out of love with rebellion in the 80s when they started getting mortgages, leaving the Stones and Bond feeling a little toothless the last decade or so.  

Cut to Skyfall!   Quick Plot Synopsis:  It’s like most Bond movies in that there’s Bond, M (played by Judi Dench and called “Mum” throughout most of the movie), a Bond villain, a plot to kill M and a car.  What else do you need for a Bond movie?  

Bond’s villain, we’ll call him Villain, is an ex-MI6 spy with an axe to grind.  He creates an interesting family structure with Judi Dench as the mother and the Bond family groundsman (who literally walks out from behind a corner in the last act of the movie and says something like, “You’re fight is my fight.”) as the father.  Bond somehow comes off as the younger responsible brother and Villain appears to be the batshit crazy older brother who blames his mommy for everything.  


Bond, trying to bounce back from a failed mission, takes it on himself to protect “Mom.”   Dench spends most of the movie protecting Bond (her loyal son) while trying to defend her bad decisions concerning the older son (he had it coming).  Oh, and the Bond Family Groundsman tries to offer sage fatherly advice to Bond before realizing Bond’s evolved past any advice he has left to offer.  How’s all that for a babyboomer fantasy?  Mom loves and needs me and Dad doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. 

So at the climax, the crazy brother corners “Mom” and “Dad” in a church (In a church!  Oh, Babyboomers, you make it too easy for me.) and wants “Mom” to kill both of them in a murder suicide.  Oh, and the deranged brother, of course, is gay.  Bond kills the brother  but his “Mom” (Judi Dench) dies in his arms.  He’s left with a father figure he’s surpassed, a critical but ultimately nurturing dead mother figure, a warning of what he could become (damned crazy gays) and a sense of self awareness that only comes from separating yourself from your childhood/parents/home.