Where Were They Going Without Ever Knowing The Way?

At this year’s Passover, I was unfortunately more than a little discomfited by the aftereffects of the fatal lure of a root beer float to go along with dinner at a small drive-in near the location of Passover where I did some reading and waited in vain for the company of a friend who, running a bit late, decided not to stop to eat before the Passover. So, after helping put away the chairs, which is one of my customary, albeit usually somewhat private duties, I had to make use of the somewhat old fashioned privy downstairs and by the time I was finished with my business I was the last person in the building, save one, a retired gentleman who lives within walking distance of where the Passover took place. For some reason he was in a particularly chatty mood and my polite unwillingness to end the conversation left me waiting for some time as I wanted very much to be at home putting the finishing touches on a couple of blog entries [1] and getting to bed early because I had planned on getting to work early in the morning to be able to make the drive across town in a timely fashion. I did not get to bed early.

As I stood, aware of the pain in my right foot but keeping an air of placid friendliness, it struck me that perhaps the gentleman talking to me was somewhat lonely, and perhaps simply did not realize that much of what he was saying either came off off-puttingly as bragging about having a good marriage that had lasted 44 years, a notable and somewhat obvious sore spot for someone as conspicuously single as I am, as well as about his success in drag racing vehicles over the years. He spoke at some length about his uxorious devotion to American vehicles and how rare that is, and I even took note of what seemed to be an implicit invitation to a vintage car event at Reno that he loyally attends annually with another friend of mine. He even seemed to brag about his enjoyment of expensive restaurants for the Night To Be Much Observed, as a way of providing the womenfolk with at least one night off of kitchen duty. I politely avoided a harsh reply to these unpleasant matters and when he bragged that he could get home by the time I drove up to the intersection where we stood and chatted just outside of the Passover venue, I mildly agreed that he probably could.

It has been my experience that those who tend to enjoy talking long, without being particularly careful about making sure that what they are talking about is of interest to the people they are talking with, are fairly lonely people. There are many people in this world—I happen to be one—who have many words inside and an insufficient audience for those thoughts and concerns, and so I know that when time and opportunity permit I tend to be particularly chatty, perhaps to the annoyance and frustration of those people unfortunate enough to feel trapped in conversation with me. Despite my irritation at having found myself so trapped, I was at the same time empathetic with someone who despite obvious success in life still appears to lack enough people who are interested in hearing what he has to say. The conversation proved of at least one practical benefit to me personally, and that was finding the most convenient way to the interstate, and home, by taking a route I had been unfamiliar with, and a route which ended up being a pleasant drive.

One of the years I went to the Winter Family Weekend in Lexington, Kentucky, the Sabbath sermon message was given by a pastor who later, and memorably, served as the President of the church that I attend. His sermon discussed one of the parts of the conversation between Jesus Christ and his disciples on the night he was arrested after having taken the Passover with them. The passage he discussed is John 14:1-7, which reads as follows: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas [2] said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”

When giving the message, the minister had a clever introduction in which he played a song by a band I happen to like [3] called Fastball, a hit song called “The Way.” After having such an inventive introduction, I waited for the minister to come up with some deep and striking observation on the passage, on the way that people struggle to find a place or to recognize the path that Jesus Christ has set out for us, or for the fact that this message is one of the notable seven “I Am” statements of John, but there was no such insight either of a theological or practical manner, and I left the message disappointed. Some years later, we both attended the Feast of Tabernacles together in 2008 in Mendoza, Argentina, and I was asked to come along to the head table where the ministers sat at that Feast to help translate between him and a lovely and flirtatious young lady I happened to get to know at the feast and at whose house I spent the following Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. She spoke English well enough that my translation skills were not particularly necessary.

At that Feast, though, I was particularly struck by the minister’s devotion to his family. He gave a sermon about “being somebody” that told of how he had been called by a real estate agent trying to appeal to his desire to be somebody in selling him a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, and how he felt like somebody not because of material possessions but rather because of the love and encouragement of his family. I was struck by the fact that I was not dealing with a very intricate or deep-thinking person, but that he was someone who used striking personal observations to make somewhat commonplace and ordinary observations. Yet upon knowing who he was, and seeing that he was a person of somewhat straightforward loyalties and not inclined to dig too deeply at what he encountered, I did not feel disappointed in hearing his messages thereafter, since I was no longer looking for layers of meaning that he simply was not going to provide. Sometimes I can be a bit too much like Elizabeth Bennet [4], enjoying observing and interacting with fellow intricate and complicated people because they provide such fascinating study, but like her I can realize that a character is not made more admirable simply for being intricate, or is less admirable because it is more straightforward and easy to grasp, so long as the simplicity is a good sort.

Many people, though, live and die without knowing the way to live. I was recently struck by the death of a WWE performer [5] who went by the name of Chyna. This woman had a noteworthy life, but a short one that only lasted forty-five years. During her brief heyday, she had been the first and so far only intercontinental champion in the World Wrestling Federation and the first notable female champion of that theatrical version of fake wrestling. To be certain, much of her life was very unsavory—she had been in six pornographic movies and struggled with alcoholism, and at the time of her death she had been taking medicine for anxiety and insomnia that were likely related to a difficult life that had involved sexual kissing by a much older teacher when she was in Middle School and also being raped as a college student in Tampa [6]. In looking at the life and death of someone who was famous but clearly unhappy, it is obvious that such a life was the result of a lot of people not knowing the right way, or living the right way, but that I did not feel any particular desire to look down on her either, even if her time could have been far more profitably spent had she been able to live without drugs and alcohol.

Yet one sees in the story of Chyna an all-too-typical reminder of the terrible tensions that human beings are caught in. Her repeated, albeit unsuccessful, relationships, her exploration and exploitation of her sexuality, are evidence of the longing for love that she felt, but clearly she thought herself to be damaged goods, and despite the fact that she was obviously a strong woman, her strength and popularity had not saved her from the torments of her mind. Being all too well acquainted with the torments of my own mind, I feel no desire to add to the torments of those who are also living under the same kind of weight, nor to heap abuse on someone whose struggle with her demons was clearly unsuccessful. It is not for those who think they know the way to make fun of those who wander lost in a seemingly trackless wilderness. It is rather our place to build roads and to draw maps, and to serve as guides to point people where they should go, and to be available for emergency assistance when people are stranded on the side of the road. We all suffer enough as it is without adding to the weight that others collapse under, after all.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/book-review-lincoln-in-his-own-words/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/pieces-of-me/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/thomas-didymus-the-man-and-the-myth/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/the-harsh-light-of-day/

[4] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/the-miseducation-of-elizabeth-bennet/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/a-plain-supper/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/ten-books-that-have-shaped-my-life/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/and-if-she-is-a-door-we-will-enclose-her-with-boards-of-cedar/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/some-notes-for-a-defense-of-fitzwilliam-darcy/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/the-jane-austen-society-of-vancouver-washington/