Labyrinths

Life is not Webster's Dictionary. That's what one of my 8th graders told me yesterday afternoon. We met for coffee and were continuing a conversation about the meaning of beauty. Her thought was that beauty equaled appreciation; the problem then, was that she couldn't flip the definition around and/or come to a conclusion about what the opposite of beauty was.

I'm someone who really loves definitions, meanings, connotations - anything subtly deep and distinct. That's part of the great genius of literature; all of the words mean something in and of themselves, and then all of the patterns and compilations of these words mean something more. Allusions, foreshadows, double meanings, they are what make literature worth reading in the first place. So it seems natural to me to have this carry over into "real life". Finding the connections between people, situations, and thoughts, and then interposing them with what our immediate and obvious realizations are, is part of what makes life so fantastic.

But as conversation in these veins continue, acquiescence to the inevitable occurs. We find that we run into dead ends with these exercises and then don't know where to turn and can't find our way back to the beginning of the maze. And so it was yesterday, when we came to the ultimate realization that life could not be made up of definitions, with clear-cut answers for every scenario. And this conclusion, of course, led to talking about gardens balancing on pins (who knows), the Free Masons from National Treasure, and blue underwear.