“the books assigned to us don’t have any REAL meaning”
yeah, i know. i am an author, i felt that keenly through my entire academic career; i hated knowing it wasn’t the case. that i was being lied to.
but we make meaning. the first time someone read into my writing and found something i hadn’t put there, i found myself smiling. oh yeah! it felt good. it felt good they tore it open and plucked something out. it felt like i had done my job well. and they felt good, too.
a lot of books assigned in school won’t have something you see yourself in. they’re general books, or they’re forced in by how cheap they are, or they are just good examples of one type of writing. it is frustrating writing essays about them, like pretending you are panning for gold while you are ankle deep in a plastic pool. these are things that were made for other people, for another time, for a different set of hands. we cannot force ourselves to be kin to what is unlike us. our skin rejects it.
but we make meaning. there will be books - and maybe some will even be assigned - that will not be intentionally written for you, but they will feel that way, down in your ribs, like when you catch your reflection in a store front and for a second don’t recognize who you are. there will be art and dances and songs (god, so many songs) that will do this, over and over and over and over, because our hearts are these big things that love to grab onto any sign we are not alone. that our pain and our losses are not unnoticed. they will be the books you hold differently and the songs you scream along to and the art you cry about in the middle of the museum. and these same books and songs and art pieces will be looked at by other people and those people will say “there’s no meaning here. i don’t get it.”
sometimes, sometimes, i do have a meaning i tuck into words. and sometimes even if i think the meaning is one thing, someone will tell me: here is another. and every time this happens, i am 13 again, and i feel good, and i know i made something worth loving. worth looking at. people come to me and they say: i know you don’t know me, but you know me. and i do know you, because we know each other, because a piece of writing is a two-way looking glass, where you see me, and in that honesty, i hope you get to see yourself, too.
somewhere, tucked into this, chewing on itself, is something i like to remind myself. when i am at the end of the rope, when i am scratching old wounds, when i am trying to untie my tether because none of it matters, i say: we make meaning. and i think of the books that i love that others do not. i think of the flowers that mean things to me that i cannot spell and you cannot know. i think of what i have given meaning to, and who has given me meaning. and i tell myself. yes, this is a dark time. but we will take it and we’ll put it on a loom and we’ll weave ourself something out of it, and we’ll make meaning from this life. i will give meaning to others when i can and i will write and hope others find meaning and i will live like i am meaning to, because if i’m stuck here, i mean to live.
no, maybe it doesn’t mean anything. but maybe it’s just the wrong book. go on. keep looking.