Human Purpose
The longing for purpose in life is integral to what makes us human. Through three short stories, we are presented with numerous fictional individuals that represent this ideal. Our destiny, if truly preordained, is nonetheless invisible to us. We are strangers to ourselves in a way, continuing along through life, blind to what lies ahead in the immediate beyond.
We, as humans, are obsessed with the concept of destiny, and yet see the morally grey world around us as random, seemingly without meaning. This paradox is what drives us, what instills within us the need to fight on.
This human desire to find meaning and purpose in life is integral to the three short stories ahead. By furthering our understanding of what makes us human, both in what divides us and binds us together in equal measure, we might be able to look inward and better understand ourselves in turn.
These three short stories are beautiful, and this beauty is expounded by the relatable nature inherent within their characters. We may not be in a devastated pandemic-ridden world, in the middle of an emotionally wrecking affair, or be born with keys instead of fingers, yet we are made of the same tragic qualities.
We experience great trials and triumphs, joy and happiness, and still sadness and sorrow. And through it all, we push onwards. We all yearn for something worth living for, whether it be roles to fulfill, love to be shared, or great goals to be accomplished.
We stumble and fall, and yet we trudge onwards all the same. I believe these separate writings are united by this overarching theme, this ideal by which all humans live.
The Red Balloon- Benjamin Percy
In the midst of a world unraveling at the seams, we find two damaged individuals who strive to push onward despite the onslaught. Sara is a woman of seemingly unrealized dreams, trapped in her hometown and never having quite escaped her youth. She clings to her hopes of what might have been and still might be despite the dismal nature of her present life, holding onto them as if a lifeboat among the crashing waves.
She finds respite in her sleep, drifting off on her bed with a balloon tied to each post, “floating away” to “where dreams wait for her.” (Percy 99) She struggles to keep faith in the future, as the people in her town gather their anger and sadness caused by the plague, and direct it all at her, blaming her for the horror due to her seeming immunity to the rampant sickness.
Hank is a man who at surface level has escaped the demons of his youth, but secretly “he hasn’t changed at all,” and is still the same scared little kid of the past. (Percy 102) He strives to prove he is not, lives out his power fantasies, and envisions himself as both a savior and a destroyer in equal measure. But he can never truly escape his own fears, with the horror of the plague causing his “old doubts, those old fears” to start “washing over him again.” (Percy 101)
He is a man at a crossroads, where he can either finally move forwards and stand strong against this pandemic, or at last live like he’s always dreamed he could. Or finally, give in to what he’s always feared he was. These two broken people are both wholly dissimilar and tragically alike. They both wish for something more in life.
When their world is further brought down as the pandemic reaches cataclysmic proportions, they are beaten down even lower. They go through the days, losing everyone they know around them. They are mentally and emotionally adrift, “not quite sure what to do with” the trauma. (Percy 104)
As death and despair overtakes life as they know it, they find solace only in their unrealized dreams. Yet at the brink of oblivion, Sara finally sets free her dreams, her desires and ambitions, her happiness and sadness, and ties it to a red balloon in the hopes that it will find someone, and she will be saved, and finally released from her life.
Having lost everyone she loves, with nothing left to keep her alive, she sends out one last ditch effort to hold her to life and is ready to leave, holding the balloon before she “scrunches her eyes and let’s go.” (Percy 111)
And in Hank, we find the wounded man who happens to find this balloon and sees within her note all his dreams of what he might have been and realizes it is what he can still be. In this note, he, at last, sees the “possibility for a future” again, and becomes resolute in the mission to finally “make a difference after all.” (Percy 113)
In this ugly world, we are presented with a story of two people finding everything they wanted out of life in one another. This is a story of two people at their lowest, finding one another amidst the horror that surrounds them. No matter what lies ahead of them, I find it beautiful that these two individuals were able to find a purpose in their tragic lives even if just for a fleeting moment.
The Leading Man- Aimee Bender
This story, though fantastical in nature, is a wholly human exploration of what drives us all. The main character of this novel, simply known as the boy, is born with an unknown purpose. He, like many of us, goes through much of life searching for that which we will live for. With his ten-keyed fingers, he is always in search of the locks that might unlock life’s greater purpose.
He becomes steadfast when he is young that his life’s mission is to “find the nine doors” his keyed fingers might unlock. (Bender 122) He experiences passion and pain in equal measure, and through most of the locks he unlocks he finds nothing but monotony. He yearns to know which doors his fingers will open, and as each is cast open he finds no greater purpose. Just human life.
He experiences sadness, finds love, goes through loss, and grows up to be just a man, distinct only by his keyed fingers. He can unlock his childhood front door, but not the secrets to be found within his father’s damaged soul. He can open a mailbox, but not unlock true love within the hearts of his earlier failed relationships.
He never feels as if he is living up to his potential, always letting himself down. He tells how in his life he never plays the role of “the leading man,” instead always being relegated to “funny weird guy.” (Bender 126) We all are freed and limited by our human nature, in that we can experience life in all its beauty, and yet we might never reach certain things we strive for.
The boy is all of us, collectively, all our wishes for more from what life has given us. In the end, he finds solace in the life he has, and only then does he unlock his final purpose: to save a young boy much like himself from a tragic end. As he approaches this final door that traps the boy inside, he for perhaps the first time hesitates before he tries the lock.
He thinks of how he “wanted to hold this moment, this moment before he became a finite person.” (Bender 131) And after he takes it in, he reaches out his hand and unlocks the final lock that might make him whole. Without the mystery of what he might finally unlock, the boy is finally able to find purpose not in the unknown, but in the beautiful present that is his life.
Birdsong- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The main character strives to find meaning in her life until she finds meaning in a morally complicated affair with a married man. She appears to be an individual who is disconnected from the world around her, who is both fully aware of the reality of the affair and blinded to its inescapable doomed nature due to her present infatuation.
She is blinded, feeling as if “from the moment I met him, I had the sensation of possibility.” (Adichie 21) She is a human woman, victim to the ability to make bad choices when we are at our most broken. We are quick to assign labels of character to individuals, without fully recognizing the inherent shades of grey to be found within us all.
The main character is not evil, nor is of great moral stature. She is an imperfect woman who is defiant of the world around her, and through the course of the story becomes increasingly disenfranchised and emotionally battered as the affair weathers on. She becomes intricately intertwined with the married man and has assigned to him a true purpose in life.
She knows she should have left and “deleted his number” early on, and yet she “stayed for thirteen months and eight days” nonetheless. (Adichie 24) We sometimes content ourselves with our choices, whether we recognize their self-destructive nature or not.
She is like many of us, in that she strives to escape from what she perceives as the monotony of her present. I believe this affair to be both tragic and achingly human, in that two seemingly wounded people are drawn to one another, seeking to run to what they feel is missing. We are all flawed in our own way, and this is what makes us human.
We are all broken inside, even if but just a little, and we all strive to build ourselves back up. She puts it best when she talks of human nature, saying “Rituals of distrust. . . That is how we relate to one another here, through rituals of distrust. . . . We know the rules and we follow them, and we never make room for things we might not have imagined. We close the door too soon.” (Adichie 26) We are flawed beings, all just trying to make our way through life.
