Too Much World
After finishing Station Eleven, my fellow “students” and I gathered to discuss it one last time. The biggest question we had for one another was this: “What did it all mean?”.
“Survival is insufficient,” said one person.
“I’m not quite sure,” said another.
“Never kill a mockingbird,” ventured one poor, misled fellow.
And I? I gave an abbreviated response, which, with the blessings of time and editing, will expand on below.
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In my humble opinion, this poem is very closely linked to the message of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. From a king standing in a pool of blue light to a man dreaming of distant ships, the book is an ode to life. Living, truly living, is something that is ironically accomplished primarily by characters who have seen the death of most of humanity, while the pre-collapse people are preoccupied with things like appearances, money and reputation. Why does it take the collapse of society for them to appreciate the overwhelmingly beautiful coincidence that is life?
Let me ask you another question: when you awoke this morning, did you think to yourself what a wonderful and strange thing it is to be alive? To open your eyes, to feel the pillow under your head and to know that you have the chance to spend one more day in this odd, incredible, painful world?
Or did you groan and roll over, unwilling to face another day of dreary work and running from the various organizations that have placed bounties on your head?
I must admit that my first thoughts were of the second variety, and I suspect that most of you feel the same. It is preposterous to think that we are not constantly amazed by life, yet, like in Mandel’s book, we take so many modern wonders for granted. In fact, I will now take a moment to be awestruck that the thoughts in my head are able to be translated into a language that someone has so thoughtfully invented, and those words are being digitally represented in that unfathomable place known as the Internet and that you, YOU, someone who I do not know, is reading them. This is an age where I can send my thoughts around the world in a matter of seconds.
But we don’t think of all that. Life ceases to amaze us and settles down into the comfortable tedium of normalcy.
But no more! No more, I say, waving my copy of Station Eleven with jubilation, as you look at me in confusion. And then I beat you around the ears with the book, screaming at you to appreciate the wonders of sensation, of pain, of literacy, of oxygen.
And then as the cops drag me away, I am in awe of the nature of civilization, of these men who bear no grudge against me but who will cart me off to a jail to rot. In awe of the car that takes me there, the cold metal of handcuffs that has been expertly molded into the shape of wrists, the sharp edges of the lawyer’s suit and the sharper edges of her mind. I am in awe of the way I am able to imagine this story, and broadcast it to an audience who is able to take those words, that story, understand them and rightfully judge me a lunatic.
If only we were able to truly grasp how amazing and unlikely existence, especially modern existence, is. If only we were able to see our world with the wonder of someone who did not live in it.
- A.M. Ham
