I warn you, this is totally spastic and jumps around a lot.  I'm posting it anyways.  I don't really care that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

Right now I am about 3/4 of the way finished with Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" and I loved it because it makes me ashamed.  It makes me ashamed for every time I've complained at something being less than I expected, because at least it was at all.  It makes me ashamed for hesitating with relationships for fear of them panning out into anything important, because at least I don't fear committment to another with the knowledge they could be blasted away by an exploding mine at any second.  It makes me ashamed that we as humans care more about what others will think of us in response to our actions than whether our actions are truly good or bad, even when this is encouraging correct behavior.  It makes me ashamed that we turn sex into a spectacle and breastfeeding into pornography because we feel we have overcome nature.  We are above ourselves.  We still require food and sleep and medicine, but when we look out over a snowy 18th century graveyard, we assume we are better because we are alive and living in the 21st century.  But people are people no matter where you go, and who's right is it to decide what is good and worthwhile and what is a waste?

If you'll excuse me, I wish to quote a particularly poignant point made by O'Brien: "You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask.  Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, "Is it true?" and if the answer matters, you've got your answer.  You'd feel cheated if it never happened.  Yet even if it did happen, even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth.  Absolute occurence is irrelevent.  A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth."

We had a discussion in class about how upset people become when they discover Tim O'Brien's novels are just that --novels of fiction.  Though he was a solider in Vietnam, and though the central character of The Things They Carried is in fact a writer named Tim O'Brien, this does not make everything in it "true."  However, no one will ever know except Mr. O'Brien himself how many of the stories he shares in his novel actually happened --and who cares?  Am I supposed to feel more sad about a man being blown to pieces while playing catch with his friend if it's real, but not so much if it's fake?  Well if it's not that I should react differently, why do we care what the truth of the matter is, anyways?

Well, of course because of how we react.  Literature and art and speech and existence are all about our reactions and those we cause in others.  Of course you want to know if the Jews are actually being sent to better neighborhoods or herded into giant chambers to be gased to death --because something should be done if it's the latter. 

But what are we doing about the truth?  If you read a story about a homeless man slowly freezing to death right outside someone's doorstep because they refused to offer him a warm cup of tea, what will you do?  Nothing.  If you find out that story is "true", that those events occurred exactly as you read them, right down the street, what will you do?  Nothing.  Nothing will change except that you can brag to your friends that you know for a fact how things actually went down, that you know the truth, that you are enlightened, that you are better than them.  But KNOWING is nothing; DOING is everything.  Knowing the truth is pointless if we are treating the truth the same way we treat the non-truths --entertainment, spectacle, a crappy bedtime story for the nightmares.

So what if Lee Strunk didn't really get his leg blown off and die in a hospital from complications several weeks later?  The "truth" is that somebody somewhere died, and why doesn't anyone care about THAT?  Only whether the story they heard specifically really happened or not.

I am not thinking of the War in Iraq as I write this.  I'm not even totally thinking of Vietnam, because I think my sentimentality while reading this book is probably PMS-influenced.  I'm thinking of myself as a writer, sharing a cup of coffee with Tim O'Brien.  I'm thinking about listening to him talk about Vietnam, about how he became an award-winning author for sharing his experiences, and him asking me what I'm doing.  What I'm writing about.  I'm thinking about me explaining that I'm a writing major, that right now I write what I know and what I can imagine, and then telling him everything I WANT to do, everywhere I WANT to go, everything I WANT to experience, everything I WANT to write about.  Feel free to substitute "will" for "want," I might quip to him.  I'm thinking about him letting me finish, then asking quite seriously, "Well what are you waiting for?"

Have I mentioned I quite often feel as though I am wasting my time in Boston?  Not always.  I understand college is grand, and it's teaching me important skills, and I am definitely gaining experience.  But often I sit in my prissy American city, expensive private college dorm, and I think, "What am I doing for myself?  What am I gaining from this?  Am I living or am I just preparing to live?" Sometimes it's a good answer that makes me feel like I am spending all this money on tuition and crap wisely.  Other times I do not feel that way.  All the time I remind myself that if I am simply preparing myself for life, that's not good enough.  There is no preparation.  If you're waiting for life to start, you've already missed your bus.  Even in high school, college, whatever, you should be DOING something, not just thinking about what you WANT to do.

I do not question the meaning of life anymore.  If you are asking "what's the point of life?" you've already missed it.  Life is what you are doing at this exact moment, sitting here, reading my blog.  Life is how you treat the next person you come into contact with.  Life is the expectations and standards you hold yourself and others to.  Life is how you feel when you wake up in the morning and how you feel when you go to bed at night and how you feel every minute in between.  Life is what you do have and what you do not have and how much you really care.  Life is what you do with yourself when no one is watching, and what you do when EVERYONE is watching.  Life is everything and nothing and by the time you define it, your turn is up.

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war.  It's about sunlight.  It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when yu know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do.  It's about love and memory.  It's about sorrow.  It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

When was the last time you actually listened?