The Pang: An Essay

The Pang

An Essay by The Reformist Princess

When I was a teenager, whenever I would watch a movie or read a book, it became my whole world. I would love every moment of it. The exhilaration, the misery, the angst, the devotion, it felt like I lived every moment as the characters did. It was brilliant. But then it ended. I felt myself whipped back into a reality that was nothing like that of the stories I loved. A reality that often felt boring, meaningless and empty by comparison. This was when it came. The pang. A sudden, sharp, painful emotion. It was what I felt as the realisation gripped me that my life wasn’t in the colour of the story. It was here, in the grey reality. I had for so long just thought this feeling was unique to me. Until yesterday. I taught my classroom of Year 11 English students to feel the way I do about a story. To fall in love with the characters, to break when their hearts broke, to be outraged at their struggles and to feel so much of their own emotion lived vicariously through them. And when that book finished. I saw something familiar in their faces. I saw the pang. And in that moment, I felt a relatable hopelessness. Here I was, having spent my years trying to capture a storybook life and while I’d caught a taste of it here and there, I still felt the pang. The fall back to reality hurt for them, just as it did for me. And this drives me to resolve a burning question. What do the characters in my stories have that makes me feel so alive and what am I missing that I can’t find it in my reality? In short, I think it’s four things. Importance, a team, suffering and a cause. And what better way to explore this question and these four critical elements than through the four epic tales that have given me the most unbearable pangs and their four protagonists who I have many a night fallen asleep dreaming of becoming. Firstly, C.S Lewis’s beloved Lucy Pevensie from his fairy-tale classic, The Chronicles of Narnia. Secondly, Samwise Gamgee, the boy next door who ends up the unlikely hero of one of history’s most famous fantasy tales, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien. Thirdly, dystopian heroine Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne’s Collins bestselling and scandalous trilogy, The Hunger Games. And finally, a household name from the world’s highest grossing book series in history, Hermione Grainger, the devoted magical genius from J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter empire.  

So what’s the first key factor that sets apart our characters from the lives of the mundane? Importance! But probably not in the way that you might think. I remember a moment from one of my favourite TV shows, Dr Who. The Doctor comes across a boy in the marketplace. He asks the boy, “who are you?” And the boy responds by saying, “oh, no one important” to which the Doctor comments, “how fascinating! I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.” That’s the best thing about importance, everyone can have it. No one likes a story with a protagonist who is descendent of some historic dynasty or a hero born of some sacred bloodline. We can’t help to whom we were born, but we can help who we become. Lucy Pevensie became a queen of a magical world not because she had some predestined favour but because she climbed into a dusty old wardrobe and saw something no one else was looking for. Samwise became the saviour of Middle Earth not because he was the son of someone royal or noble but because he was committed to a promise he made to protect his best friend. Katniss became the leader of a rebellion not because she had been ordained to do so but because she was determined to keep her little sister safe. Hermione Grainger helped defeat the world’s most powerful and evil wizard not because she had a divine birthright but because she was devoted to her schoolwork and her friends. Seeing old things in a new light, being a devoted friend, protecting our little sister or even just working hard at our schoolwork are important things that are all within our reach. Perhaps the first requisite to our storybook lives is this. Do what is important, and you will become important. 

The most fundamental source of meaning in our lives, is each other. Connection is the most important human longing. But one person is not enough. The best connection, the most meaning is drawn when we surround ourselves with a team. I’m not talking about a sports team you see once a week, I mean the kind of team Alfred Lord Tennyson describes in his poem Ullysess, “my mariners, souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me.” The people who for better and for worse share our lives. Your tribe, if you will. For Lucy, it’s her three siblings, Peter, Susan and Edmund, all so different and yet all so special to her in unique ways. For Samwise, it’s The Fellowship of the Ring, the hobbits, elves, dwarfs and men who devote themselves to a common good. For Katniss, it’s her team of fellow rebels – Haymitch, Peeta, Finn, Johanna and Gale. For Hermione, it’s her two misfit friends Ron and Harry. In each other, they find something to live for and fight for. They endure their pain and fear for and with each other. Now while this is something we all long for, it is something so few of us find. A real team. True friends. We live in capitalist society that encourages us to compete with rather than support each other. Our materialistic existence tells us everything is replaceable, even each other. We learn from the neglect of those who were meant to protect us, that people cannot be trusted. Our need for control degrades the depths of our relationships. These are not small obstacles to overcome. But we must overcome them. To quote the wisdom of Lebron James, “nothing valuable, was ever done alone.” If you’re not going to be a team player, if you’re not willing to share your soul with those around you, you’re never going to find the kind of meaning you long for. You’re not going to get rid of that pang in your gut. To live the storybook life, you have to find your team, your imperfect gang of misfits who will break and make your heart a hundred times over. Find them, and through the wind and the rain and the darkness, don’t let them go. 

I often catch myself envious of a character in an action-packed adventure, only to give myself the rude awakening that the life I think looks so good, is no walk in the park. We rarely stop to notice that most of the characters we long to be, see, live and breathe huge amounts of suffering and fear. Lucy Pevensie is hunted down by an evil ice queen, faces the fear of being lost in an everlasting winter unable to find her way back home and has to engage in a war where she fights massive grizzly bears ten times her size while gingerly holding a little pocketknife. This sound more like the stuff of nightmares than harmless childish fantasy. Samwise Gamgee walks a journey full of unthinkable terrors. He, often in hopeless uncertainty, has to endure exhaustion and starvation whilst fighting off grotesque cannibalistic orcs, evil spirits, ghosts and even human eating spiders. I’m still a bit scared of the dark! Katniss lives through extreme trauma that she never fully recovers from. She helplessness witnesses the death of so many innocents. She is forced to face painful injury and the threat of a meaningless death at every turn. She spends most of her days overcome  fear for herself and those she loves. Is this really the life we envy? Whether it is or it isn’t, the truth remains that suffering is essential to a good story. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, we are refined by the fire, sharpened by the knife, forged like a diamond by immense pressure. We cannot become who we need to be, if we are not forced to grow, learn and adapt through constant challenge. When your body is injured, it secures your injury in scar tissue. This dense, thick tissue makes your injured parts twice as strong as they were before. To quote the infinite wisdom of Kanye West, “that that don’t kill me, only makes me stronger.” Secondly, suffering is a prerequisite to the love and happiness we so desperately seek. It sounds counter intuitive but it’s true. You treasure the sweetness of freedom most when you have been locked in prison. You savour the taste and fulfilment of food when you have known the unbearableness of starvation. You hold on to knowledge and understanding like precious jewels when you have been denied the right to an education. You cherish every second with your loved ones when you have lived with the threat that they will be taken from you. To feel the elation of liberation, you must first be oppressed. What an oxymoron life is? I cannot put it better than our beloved Samwise. When all seems lost and his companion has no fight left, he tells him this. “But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines again my Frodo, it will shine out all the clearer.” Would you have treasured the sunshine if you’d never known the coldness of the shade? Would the sunrise be beautiful if it didn’t emerge from the darkness? It is a confusing and painful truth but a truth you ignore at your own peril. Do not run from pain, from fear and from grief because without it, you don’t have a story worth telling.

The Proverbs of the Bible state over 100 times, in varying words, the same message. A man without a cause is lost. When one of the most respected books of ancient wisdom mentions it 100 times, I think maybe this message is something worth listening to. I’ve heard many clichés to the same effect. All our characters have a cause. They have something to fight for. For Lucy, it’s the defeat of the ice queen and the return and reign of Aslan. Samwise for the destruction of the ring and the peace of Middle Earth. Katniss for the end of social inequality and the liberation of the districts from poverty and oppression. Hermione Grainger for the death of Lord Voldemort and the acceptance and equality of Muggles. Can you see the pattern? They all seek the destruction of what is wrong and the reinstatement of all that is good. An end to tyranny, oppression and control and a rise in equality, compassion and acceptance. I’ll never forget a fortuitous conversation I had one day at a bus stop. I was waiting to catch a bus home from sports training, when an old man sat next to me with his dog waiting for his wife to get home from an appointment. I was in my final year of high school and like so many well-meaning folks do, once he found this out, he asked me my plans for life after school. It’s the old, what do you want to be when you grow up question. In short, my response was that I was unsure. I was expecting the usual follow up question asking what I liked doing as if the answer to that would simply solve my dilemma. The trouble was, like most people, I liked a lot of things and my likes changed frequently. How could I use that to pin down my destiny? But he didn’t say what I expected. He gave me a very different question. He said to me, “well tell me what makes you mad. What can’t you stand about the world? What makes your blood boil?” I was taken aback by his question. No-one had ever asked me that before. As I stammered for an answer, he leaned in, and whispered to me, “go and spend your life fixing that.” Isn’t that what all our characters do? They find a cause to fight for not based on what they like doing but based on the wrongs they feel compelled to stop. They have a reason to endure all the fear, all the confusion and all the exhaustion. They have something they need to live for. Something to hope for, to reach for. I think whether you accomplish that cause or not isn’t actually that important. Reach for the stars and even if you fail, you’ll land on the moon right? Yes, I know that denies the laws of physics, but you get the sentiment. But what if your cause takes everything from you? Let’s say it even takes your life. Is it still worth having? I think so. When you die for a cause, die for an idea, die for a hope, you become immortalised. Your life leaves a legacy behind full of meaning. You leave behind a story worth telling.  Have you ever heard how the Vikings would go on about the glories of a battlefield death? Have you heard how the Samurai considered it one of life’s greatest joys to die in service of others? Even if it makes you a martyr, it still matters. So maybe to find the story book life, to avoid the pang, you need to follow that old man’s advice. Go and spend your life fixing something. Find your cause. 

May I credit the irony in writing a guide on how to resolve a question that I myself haven’t truly resolved. In spite of this, my genuine hope is that when we find these four things in our reality, we won’t feel the pang of longing when our favourite books, movies and stories come to an end. We won’t wince at the crash back down to reality because our reality will be the same as the characters we love. I can already hear the cynic’s voice in my head. The voice that says we are looking for something that doesn’t exist. The pragmatists that spits back that fairy tales aren’t reality and they never will be. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are wrong! To follow the rationale of Pascal’s Wager, I’d rather look and not find than not look at all. While I like to write things for others, more than anything, I wrote this essay for me. To help me in my search. To silence the cynic in my mind. To become who I have always dreamed I would be, I need to follow in the footsteps of those storybook characters that fill my dreams. I need to do what is important. I need to find and hold onto my team. I need to embrace my suffering. I need to find my cause. Maybe there comes a day, when I master these four things, that others read my story, feel the pang and just like me are motivated to find what is missing.