Wild Green Thoughts

I've been thinking a lot lately about how other people perceive me. I know this is generally not a good thing to do, but I haven't been thinking about it in a way that makes me nervous or bad about myself. I more mean that I have just been curious about what other people say when they talk about me. I know they do – everybody is talked about to some extent. You exist to other people when you are not interacting with them, just as they exist to you. I've just been really curious how.

I think part of this curiosity has come about because of the books I've read recently. I'm currently reading a collection of five plays by Oscar Wilde, and it begins with a brief rundown of his life followed by an introduction that discusses his life and its effects on the things that he wrote. The biographical briefing is only a few pages long, hitting only the most important parts of his career. I started wondering if those points that the book deemed important would have included all the parts of his life he considered significant. Biographies are wonderful things; I want to be the kind of person they write biographies about someday. But I can't help but wonder how much they leave out. Would Oscar Wilde's autobiography look different from the ones written by everyone else? Does one exist? I don't think one does, otherwise I am certain this biography would have mentioned that. That, at the very least, seems like something they wouldn't leave out.

But if, against all odds, a biography about me gets written some day, I can't help but wonder what would be in it? Certainly there wouldn't be a passage about every single person I dated in high school or college. What would be considered the turning point? Where would they say my big break came? I might just be wondering these because I'm trying to figure out what my plan is after graduation. But I do think these are interesting things to consider. A biography absolutely cannot include everything about someone's life. Considerations must be made for cultural significance, what is interesting to read, and the fact that extremely long books can often be intimidating for publishers and audiences.

However, this question of mine doesn't just come from the introduction to a collection of plays.

This summer, I also read two novels by John Green: Looking For Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars. I loved both of these books, of course; I'm not the one person in the world who doesn't like John Green. I might have been rather reserved at first, going into Looking For Alaska, but once I let my preconceptions about the characters go and allowed them to speak for themselves, I really found myself in love with the book. After the heartbreaking and lovely ending that was that novel, I went excitedly into The Fault in Our Stars and found exactly what I was hoping for. John Green writes young adult novels the way I wish I did. His characters are flawed but infinitely likeable. The emotion is always palpable between them, and their dialogue switches well between quick and lengthy. Not to mention I felt tears in my eyes at the end of both novels. I'm not afraid of that.

In The Fault in Our Stars, there is a big deal made over the significance or insignificance of funerals. Now, discussion over the validity of eulogies isn't particularly new. The Orson Scott Card novel Speaker for the Dead concerns itself with this as the majority of its underlying plot, and, putting aside my polar differences with Card's personal philosophy, that will still always be one of my favorite novels. But whereas Speaker for the Dead decides that the only way to truly remember the dead is to put their full, uncensored past on display, the characters in The Fault in our Stars disagree. While they hate the superficial nature of eulogies, the cliches that are spouted, the sugarcoating that happens, they ultimately decide that a funeral is never really for the person who died. Rather, they say, it is to comfort those left behind.

And while I would agree with that, I would also disagree with a larger theme that plays out in both Green novels. There seems that the characters hold a great deal of resentment towards those who are left behind. Not the close friends, of course. But many of the characters state that they feel that people who mourn but weren't close are fake or insincere in some way. I am inclined to disagree with that. Maybe I'm not the best person to state this, since I haven't particularly mourned the passing of anyone in a long time, but I think that someone touches the lives of a lot more people than they realize. Sure, there might perhaps be those who pretend to feel bad just to get attention, but I legitimately believe there will me more people than someone might expect at their funeral.

I think my point is that I would be curious to see who would be present at my funeral. That's something of a morbid thought, I suppose. I'm certainly not wishing for death, or even contemplating my own at all. I just really do wonder how I would be remembered if I was gone tomorrow, or how I will be remembered when the time actually comes. This isn't out of some vindictive spirit, nor do I think this with any particular vanity. But I really do wonder what exactly my significance is to people. I want to make a difference in people's lives, and I would love to be able to know exactly what difference I have made.

I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I write.