The Power of Quiet
& the Impractical Nature of Peanut-butter Pillows
One thing that I love about fantasy is the freedom to do just about anything.
Want to scale mountains that float like air-bound archipelagos? Watch Avatar.
Want to join a group of superpowered humanoid gems who defend earth from others of their kind? Thank you, Steven Universe.
Care to witness a sharp-shooting cowboy dimension-hop his way to the center of all reality? Read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower (and, for goodness sake, skip the movie!).
The ability to tell any story we like - to tell a fantasy story - grants our imagination the permission to fly, like we did as children. Every day, as my daughter and I walk to school, she asks me to tell her a story (which she invariably co-opts, Three Act Structure be damned), wherein the protagonist - usually one of a member of tiny monsters called Meemees, Nippys, or Pützees - experiences some hardship they must overcome. Throughout my desperate attempt to control the narrative, she’ll interject ridiculous and completely implausible details, which I sort of just have to roll with:
“And the Meemees have peanut-butter pillows!” Impractical and messy.
“The Pützee bited all the Meemee babies!” Horrifying, improbable, lacking in character motivation.
“The Nippys don’t like to play with the Pützees.” Racist.
The point of these rambling stories is, really, to distract her and keep her little four-year-old legs moving for the entire 30 minute, mile-long walk to preschool. But in telling these stories, I try to model life lessons: kindness, forgiveness, conflict resolution, etc. It’s fun to spin nonsense with her, but I’d like her to learn something too.
And herein lies the quandary of any fantasy:
We can invent anything, but if there’s no reason for it, than it means nothing.
Or, in the words of Jeff Goldblum: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."
As of this writing, I’ve not yet stopped my daughter on our walk, turned her to face me, knelt down and told her: “Your fanciful ramblings are nonsensical and frivolous. Peanut butter pillows, for a furry monster one inch tall?” Nor will I, because imagining the improbable is what childhood is all about, and the connection of disparate concepts is what defines creativity itself, and because I don’t want to explain the mechanics of a glue trap to my 4-year-old (who lives in New York City, so she’ll learn soon enough).
The point leads to me to the point of today’s rambling, disjointed story:
I don’t want to tell a story that doesn’t mean anything.
So the question I’ve asked myself is:
Why is Quiet?
I asked myself these questions a lot in the lead-up to Quiet: Level One. “What am I trying to say? What is your point, Jonah? Why does the world need Quiet?”
I was heading in the right direction, I think, when a very talented friend of mine helped clarify things a lot. In describing the overpowering magnitude of Quiet’s quest - to prevent an unstoppable warrior from destroying the Tree of Worlds - she told me:
“I think a lot of people feel like they’re failing right now. In their job, their life, their friendships and relationships.”
And this rang really, really true.
Don’t we all feel like we’re failing at something? When was the last time you didn’t have, like, twenty problems going on? Not to get too dark wit it, but are we not constantly trying to reassemble and shore-up the slowly-collapsing sand-castle of our lives?
Both physics and Buddhism teach us that systems invariably fall into disorder, but that doesn’t stop us for beating ourselves up over every little thing. Who has time to practice the sacred art of nonattachment when we haven’t gone to the gym in 4 days; when we’re experiencing hardship at work; when there’s mold in the tub; when we don’t get a job we want; when we’re rejected by someone we like?
And how do you possibly cope when your arch-nemesis looks like he could bench-press The Rock, and you’ve got the physique of a toddler?
Let there be no doubt: Quiet is our hero.
But, spoiler alert, he is going to fail… a lot. He’s going to get his bony little butt handed to him in all sorts of ways. How he handles that failure… that’s what matters.
Because, as small and voiceless as he is, Quiet is resilient.
As scared as he might feel, Quiet acts brave.
And as obviously outmatched as he is, still he will rise to meet his opponent.
To me, Quiet is all of us. He is smaller than he’d like, and weaker, and relatively voiceless. And he is hopelessly outmatched by Galahorn, who can be said to represent the Real World: bigger, stronger, uncaring and utterly relentless (although not without good).
Wherever you are, whatever you’re up to in life, please try to remember that you are not failing, you are just living. Just try to be good to yourself and others; really, nothing else matters.
Wishing you the best this holiday season. Talk soon!
Jonah
Next week: Quiet gets a friend!