Reading: No One You Know by Michelle Richmond
Listening: Uprising by Muse
Surfing: Amazon
Watching: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Even if you’re not Bible-savvy, chances are you at least have a vague knowledge about the Garden of Eden as told in the book of Genesis.
Picture it: lush grass, plush shrubbery, trees with succulent fruits dripping from its branches, lions and tigers and bears are domestic pets, and the fashion statement of the era was letting it all hang out. It was the proverbial heaven on earth.
Ah yes. A perfect world.
Except for that one tree.
And we have our heroine, Eve, who looks at that tree with the forbidden fruit and possibly thinks, “This is all great, but I’m bored and this creepy, talking serpent has a convincing argument.”
And two bites later, Eve and Adam are strapping on some fig leaves and being waved towards the Garden exit by the angel Gabriel and his flaming swords.
Thousands, possibly millions of years later the rest of us sit here amongst the pain, death, and suffering that plagues our world and can’t help but to shake a metaphorical first in fury at Adam and Eve and their robbing the rest of us of that perfect world we all so long to experience.
Yet, I highly doubt living in a perfect world would make any of us truly happy. If we all constantly lived in a blissful state of being, how would we even know we were happy? We would all be like automated robots going about our business, void of any emotion, lacking any real life experience. Because if you think about it, if there are no bad times, how would you know how to appreciate the good times?
If it wasn’t for pain and suffering there would be no literature, no art, no music; because what are these art forms, except a creative way for individuals to express, reflect, and deal with their personal and worldly demons?
I think it was said best by Steve Carell’s character, Frank, in Little Miss Sunshine, when he’s talking about the tortured writer Marcel Proust: “French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing.”
I appreciated this quote when I watched the movie for the first time in 2006. Now, four years later and after almost four months of my own personal anguish, due to the fact that my sister and I have been defending the content of our book Do No Evil to extended family and our church, this quote strikes a very sensitive nerve. This idea that at the end of all this, I will walk away with a better understanding of myself and will have become a better person because of it.
So far the personal pain and suffering I have been enduring these past few months have provided me with a deeper sense of appreciation. For my family, for my friends, for my intelligence, for literature and my gift of writing, for all my other good and bad experiences that has brought me to where I am today and has equipped me to deal with conflict and uncomfortable situations.
But most of all, and ironically enough, over the past four months I have felt a stronger presence of God in my life than I ever have before.
Now, that’s perfection.
-Kymberly
