Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

So the cynic says to me, “I’m not going to bother voting, because democracy doesn’t work.”

Irresolute

The characters we create in fiction often have solid resolutions to their inner or outer dilemmas in order to fulfill our own imperfect journeys as writers.

Similarly, as readers, we look up to and admire characters which reach these resolutions for the same reason. We watch a narcissist learn modesty through friendship. We observe as someone who is in love either fulfills their desires or overcomes them after rejection, or realises they are neglecting the one they truly have feelings for. And, when you think about it, the characters which don’t get resolutions, such as the murderers and the morally taboo, end up dying or going away to live unhappy lives somewhere else.

We have the ability to idolise unhappy and even flawed characters because we recognise that they are in the midst of a story arc which will give them resolution, even if it ends in tragedy.

This often leads to frustrations in real life when our own problems do not turn out to be definitely resolvable. We may feel temporarily overjoyed when we realise a flaw such as, for example, exhibiting neurotic tendencies on a day to day basis. We may be able to work on those issues and move forward as a person. But when it turns out that, some years later, we’re attempting to work up the nerve to talk to someone we like and instead become obsessed with coming across as stupid or unattractive, we become disheartened. Hadn’t we solved this already? Wasn’t this 2015’s story arc? What happened to all that character development?

Life is not fiction. And if we spend our lives striving to achieve the perfection and solidity that fiction portrays as normal in real life, then we’ll end up going in circles and spiralling into a self-loathing ball of despair. People can go backwards. Life lessons can be unlearned. The fact that solving one problem didn’t solve the bigger picture that was invisible to you at the time does not mean the bigger picture is unsolvable.

We’re told many things in younger life that seem obvious at the time. Yeah, I’ll be sensible with money, that’s easy. I won’t hurt people, only an idiot would do that. And this is another one of those: yeah perfection is impossible, got it.

You don’t “got it”.

And now that you’ve got it, don’t get frustrated when you forget it again.