Chapters and stories

I've been thinking about a conversation I had a month or two ago. A grad student and I were discussing our class and he stated that he hated novels as he saw them as contrived. (I suppose I should mention that he is a short story writer.) He thought that short stories were more like life. At the time I thought him pretenious as hell and acknowledged that I had never thought about it one way or another. And I hadn't. But I am thinking about it now.

So which is it? Short story or novel? Anyone with sense can say that it is both and neither. We all have moments in our lives that define us. These moments shaped who we are for better and for worse. They are dramas and worthy of being written. On their own, they are engaging stories that connect us to others. Moments of birth, death, crises...and yet that doesn't tell the whole story.

Then the novel. We can all see how those dramatic moments build upon on another and how different view points, different perspectives might offer different stories. We all like to think that our lives might make a good novel. And we all hope that the novel has a happy ending. But that's the problem with the novel...they end. We don't.

So neither analogy offers the right perspective. Each are just ways to chart a journey, but neither is complete. Our lives have short stories and are a series of endless chapters. But I am coming to believe that the real life, the real living, might actually happen outside the pages.

I really wonder about the nuances. The past three years have been my novel. I have had a series of dramatic moments that build upon one another. I have had epic journeys, close calls with death, birth...(even a war) it might be a riveting story. But those moments don't capture what I love about my life. I relish the quieter moments.

For me it is the smaller moments, the ones that don't get written that really shape us. I wake up every day (thank whoever for that) and do laundry, go to work, make dinner, kiss the kids, yell at the kids, pet the cat, clean up cat puke...the list is endless, but it almost happens every day. I have routines and though I love when the routines are shook up, I feel off kilter when I can't perform them routinely. I think we need those every day hassles to help us appreciate the extraordinary and to help us see that the extraordinary happens every day. It is in those upsets to what we expect.

I believe in my life. I believe in my story. But in my story I spend as much time on the toilet as in profound conversation and sometimes I do both at the same time. I measure my daily success on how tired I am at the end of the day. There is the balance between completely knackered and wide awake. I think that the number of wow moments can only happen in contrast to the other moments. After all...how can you appreciate mind blowing sex if you haven't had the "okay, I want to but I also need to make dinner and finish washing the dishes" sex. Each are wonderful...each are necessary...but they fulfill different needs.

So my life really happens between the lines. My life is a short story and a novel but the page that it is written on. It is gloriously mundane, tumultuous, hilarious, and boring. I love it!