Books and I have been friends even before I could read. As I got older books allowed me to escape the reality of being a nerdy introvert in a world in which being popular seemed to be everything. Over the years that world has been broken open many times. Each time something new blossomed from among the broken pieces. Each time the breaking was a painful process.
Today, as I stood in the shower, I thought back to a simpler time in my life. A time when I was young and entranced by the poetic justice of the ancient Greek playwrights. I remember the term, "fatal flaw" and thought of the hubris of Oedipus. I thought about the simplicity of having a fatal flaw and of being able to pinpoint it and save myself a world of hurt. All the while, I scanned the shower and noted the mildew creeping in the corners of the shower door. "Out out, damned spot." Real life is messy. It would be so nice to apply literary analysis to the events of a life and come up with a neat conclusion. Something about which one could develop an A+ deserving paper or thesis. Life rarely cooperates with such simple analysis.
As I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, I remembered a privotal moment. I was sitting in a graduate class on the Bronte sisters. The professor had just given an inspired lecture. I was daydreaming about the day when I would join a faculty at some small college. Someday I would be opening up the world of the Brontes to a student like myself. The dream abruptly ended. I found it ironic that I could imagine discussing the "life" about which others wrote, without daring to live my own. In that instant, I saw that I had dreams of being an academic because it would afford me a layer of protection. It would be a noble vindication for avoiding a real, genuine life. I could devote myself to the analysis of literary character's lives and completely avoid living my own. The ivory tower of higher learning would become the tower to my inner Rapenzel.
At this point in this story, one might say that my fatal flaw was lack of confidence. I sabotaged my academic career with self-doubt. Depending on who writes the story that may or may not be true. Yet, today in a shower plagued with mildew in its corners, my choice to live an authentic live seemed the best choice. Don't get me wrong. I'd dearly love to have the respect and prestige afforded a college professor, even if that respect and prestige is held only in the minds of a few. I'd love to have the salary, even though that salary is meager when compared to the salaries of business executives. I'd love to live in a quaint New England town in a house centuries old. That life, that story belongs to someone else.
My story is one of hard work, of many failures and disappointments, of friends loved and lost, of desiring things that escaped my grasp, of dark years pierced by an hour or two of light. In my story, I've cleaned toilets in Alaska. I've been forced out of a convent. I've dropped out of grad school twice due to lack of energy, money, stamina, time. I arrive at 52 years of age with no retirement, living below the poverty level, in a house I can no longer afford. Yet, I look at this life and know, without a doubt, that my fatal flaw would be found in not embracing it. All in all it's been a rather amazing life. I've served bishops and I've served a table full of old farmers. I'll take the old farmers any day. I've moved irrigation pipe in the fields and I've written a much praised paper, an literary analysis of Le Morte de Arthur. I felt just as satisfied moving pipe as I did understanding medieval lit.
At times, I do beat myself with the whip of regret. Fortunately, this flagellation never lasts long these days. There are too many things to do, dishes to wash, showers to scrub, clothes to wash. Are these mundane tasks less important? Might they be more important that literary analysis on days when clean dishes, clean showers and clean clothes are necessary?
I loved college. I loved my major. I love that I can think about Oedipus and Macbeth while contemplating mildew in my shower. This world desperately needs more educated people, more critical thinkers. I would have been an awesome professor and yet, I don't regret my choices especially the bad ones. They were all part of my life, a life that I walked into eyes wide open. My life is messy. It is grounded in the mundane, in pain, struggles and disappointments. Honestly, it doesn't look like much right now. Yet, appearances can be most deceiving.
If I were said to have one fatal flaw, then for years that flaw would have been looking for something outside myself to save me from this life. I awaited the "knight in shining armor". He, she or it would save me from myself. With this outside help, I would become all I was meant to be and more. I thought that I needed saving. My fatal flaw was failing to see that my life, just as it is, is saving me all on its own.
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