the heart is like a box

"Nuestra Senora del Socorro... made me see that the heart is like a box; if it is filled with rubbish, there is no space for other things" (Allende, 261).

When Ines is tyring to sort out her feelings for her former companion, Pedro, who truly betrayed her, she prays a lot. She prays in an attempt to find peace with her understandably angry feelings toward Pedro. And the answer she receives is that she cannot love her new husband and his daughter if her “heart was choked with bitterness.” If our lives are full of all the unpleasantness we hold on to, there is no space for the wonderful things that come our way.

This idea reminded me of a lesson I learned as a kid in Sunday school. It is kind of a silly example, but it helped me visualize the concept. You start with a jar. Next to the jar you have a large rocks, pebbles, sand, and a cup of water (all enough to individually fill the jar). So first, you fill up the jar with the big rocks until it’s full. Then add the pebbles, and let them settle, and then add the sand, then the water, until literally every bit of the jar that could be full, is.

The object lesson in that case was to fill your days with meaningful things first, and you will then still have time to do the fun little things. If you fill your whole jar with sand first, there will be no room for the big rocks.

I think this can apply to how we spend our time, to how we fill our minds, to the things we hold near and close to our hearts. If we dwell on the bitterness and heartbreak of the past, those are the big rocks that can occupy a lot of space, where we could let something else in. It was not easy of Ines, but it was very wise of her to take out those big rocks of scars, anger, and pain so quickly, and allow room for her love for her future family to take up room in her heart. As it would be wise of us all to leave space for lovely things to come. 

"Nothing Changes"

“Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally” (Isabel Allende, Ines of my Soul, 245).

In this story of Spanish conquistadors, there is a seemingly endless cycle of violent skirmishes. Spaniards with a mindset of conquering lands pitted in war against indigenous people, set on protecting the land they have had for generations against intruders. In this novel, one chapter after another, flies by with battle after brutal battle. Each clash more gruesome than the last, and yet all very similar in destruction and pain. On top of a pattern of violence, there are other ‘sins’ that have reoccurred within this tale. Power, lust, jealousy, and ignorance all occur over and over.  As Ines puts it, historically humans have repeated the same sins over and over. I think it is human nature, on both a grand scale, and also within every one of us.

From 1095 to 1291, the crusades killed millions upon millions of people. Two-hundred years later, the Catholic church repeated the atrocity. With full knowledge of the last massacres, they fought again, for more-or-less the same reason. The Inquisition destroyed somewhere between 150,000-200,000 souls.

Pride in military strategy has been repeated. One example (which is widely over-simplified for the sake of demonstration) is when Napoleon launched the French invasion of Russia, and failed miserably in 1812 because of Russia’s size and endlessly harsh winters. Then one hundred years later, Hitler, with pride thought his armies could take on Russia more competently than Napoleon’s attempt, and failed in almost exactly the same way.

On the smallest of scales, this is sort of a silly example, but one that works: I gossip about the same people who annoy me, even after I repent about gossiping. I have often said the same lie, in order to protect the same stupid error, that I have made in the same stupid context, again.

Within our own everyday life, and for the history of mankind, the hope is that we learn from our mistakes, but human nature seems to condemn us to repeat ourselves. As Ines gravely says, “Nothing changes,” I’d have to agree sometimes. 

Stories and Time

"In theatrical performances...ordinary time ceases to operate and is replaced by original time...(mythical time) coincides with our inner, subjective time... (time) has ceased to be a spatial measurement and has changed into a source, a spring, in the absolute present... Therefore myth--disguised, obscure, hidden--reappears in almost all our acts and intervenes decisively in our history." (Paz, 211)

Paz talks about how our time as natural beings is skewed as soon as we put a label on it. As soon as we divide it into “yesterday, today, and tomorrow, into hours, minutes and seconds” (209), man is disconnected from the reality of the flow of time. So we look for small ways to realign ourselves with the subjective time flow, and relinquish the captive idea of time passing, and enjoy the moment for itself. Over human history we have discovered myths and theater as ways to pull ourselves into that subjective time zone.

I’m in a Greek and Roman Mythology class, and one quote I really loved from my reading packet says, "The range of myths is as wide as the world, being coextensive with the curiosity and the ignorance of man."

Me and a cast member in an elementary school

I think that there is a human fascination with stories. We need explanations, and we seek them, and sometimes find them, through stories.  My whole life, I have lived in the theater world. I grew up learning how to tell stories and depict characters. And through my experiences I have learned how much people enjoy leaving the structured realm of their own life, and escape into a placeless, nameless, and timeless reality that is the story they are watching. This last semester I toured with the BYU Young Company Production of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” We did the show over 40 times in the semester, but every single time it was so fun to delve into another world. A world set in New England in the 1800s, but took place in elementary school gyms in the 2000s; a world where 10 different people spoke, with only two actors’ mouths; a world that spanned half a year, in a mere 45 minutes. It was amazing to watch people leave behind their chronologically-centered world, and simply enjoy the time and space of our world in Sleepy Hollow.

I believe it is so clear that theater, myths, and just stories in general can transcend the boundaries of linear time.

Introduction

blog blog blog blog bloggity blog blog... that's one of those words if you say enough times, it starts sounding funny. and weird: blogblogblog.

Here's my blog! 

I have had experience writing a blog for a class before. At first, I thought my teacher was insane. I thought he was a crazy old man trying to make shakespeare fun for the new generation by making us write our essays via the internet. But I quickly became a fan of the idea, and am excited again to use it. The first class even prompted me to start my own blog for my own awkward life outside of academia. (Scripted Spontaneity, in case you ever want to read some embarrassing moments of mine, I've enjoyed publishing them for the world to see).

My name is Averill. I'm from Denver, Colorado. (I'm actually from Centennial, but no one's ever heard of that, so I say I'm from Denver.) I'm a junior at BYU. Currently majoring in Humanities with an emphasis in Theater, and minoring in Music. 

My passion is musical theater. I have lived a life full of cheesy costumes, tap shoes, corny songs, and ridiculously unrealistic over-the-top love stories. And I've loved every minute of my fantasy lives on stage. 

I took this class because A) I need it for my major, but also B) because it came HIGHLY recommended by a friend of mine who took it last semester. So I have VERY high expectations!