“All there is to thinking,” he said, “is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”
A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean
A rough sketch of this story is that it is about a father and his two sons who really like to go fly fishing. I mean they really, really, really like to go fly fishing. Lots of fly fishing. Lots and lots of descriptions of fly fishing. Lots of details about how to go fly fishing.
I’ve never been fly fishing and quite honestly it doesn’t interest me, mostly because I think I would be really bad at it.
Then there was the movie. Starring Robert Redford! And Brad Pitt! I saw it. It was OK. The scenery was nice. Won an Academy Award for Cinematography, so yes, it is a very pretty movie.
It is safe to say that A River Runs Through It was nowhere near my “Maybe I should read that book” list.
Then along comes a really smart bookish student and she tells me A River Runs Through It is her favorite book. I was surprised; I’ve never even heard anyone mention the book since the early 90s when the movie came out. Weeks later she mentioned again how great the book is. Another few weeks and she mentions she rereads the book frequently. Now I am intrigued. When you are talking with an interesting student with an exceptionally high ability to read and discuss Great Books and she tells you she rereads a book frequently, well, you go read it.
She was right. It is a very good book. The movie did the book a huge disservice; the movie makes it seem like one of those books with an over-the-top soap-opera-like plot. But, the novel is not plot-driven at all. This is one of those ruminative novels, where you just go along at the pace of fly fisherman standing in a river casting and recasting before strolling down to the next spot and pausing again to cast and recast. The plot (such as it is) is mixed with musings about life and nature and, yes, fly fishing. I still have no interest in going fly fishing (now I know I would be really bad at it), but at least I can now appreciate the beauty of the sport.
The lesson of the book:
It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.
The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is “reading the water,” and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing. Then one of his biggest problems is to guess where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke. And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke.
For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.
An interesting idea. Your life is not a book after all. You are just part of a giant river. The river runs through it. The river didn’t start at the beginning of your life and it doesn’t end when you die. It just runs through your life. Even the stories of your life don’t really have beginnings and ends; the river runs through all those stories too. You pause in that river, fish a bit and then move along to the next stop in the river. The river doesn’t really care when and where you stop; it’s all the same to the river.
Thinking about life that way, thinking about your specific life that way, why is it easier to read the waters of tragedy? This is a really interesting answer to a question I have long pondered. Life is full of tragedy and comedy, but we notice the tragedy more than the comedy. Why?
Tragedies seem to have beginnings, sharp moments when tragedy hits. If you step back, you can see that tragedy is just part of a longer river, but the moment the tragedy hits is abrupt and noticeable. On a river, you notice the waterfall or the place where the water goes crashing through jagged rocks. It is exactly the same river that existed a mile up when it was broad and flat and seemed quite lazy. But, you notice the disruption. You notice when tragedy hits. You don’t notice when it doesn’t.
The same thing is true when you think about lives other than your own. When you think about the people you know, you notice when tragedy hits their lives too. There is that moment when tragedy hits; what do you want to do? You want to help. You desperately want to help. But, you can’t. The narrator is talking with his father about this:
He spoke in the abstract, but he had spent his life fitting abstractions to listeners so that listeners would have no trouble fitting his abstractions to the particulars of their lives.
“You are too young to help anybody and I am too old,” he said. “By help, I don’t mean a courtesy like serving choke-cherry jelly or giving money.”
“Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.”
“So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, “Sorry, we are just out of that part.”
I told him, “You make it too tough. Help doesn’t have to be anything that big.”
Therein lies the difficulty. Someone, say a student, walks into your life and she really needs help. The tragedy is obvious. And what do you have to offer?
“That should have been my text,” my father said. “We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?”
I don’t know the answer to that question. This is, without a doubt, the hardest question I face in my job. What, if anything, is needed? Is it even possible to help someone move through the waters of tragedy into the calm part of the river on the other side?
The river runs through it. It runs through my life and yours. It just keeps moving. Tragedy is not the story of life; it is just a rough patch of water in the river. But, sometimes, it is hard to step back and see the river whole.
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