The Lathe of Heaven

My teaching semester is wrapping up.  Friday was my last day of teaching, today was the last regular lecture, my students turn in their final papers this week, and they sit for the final exam next week.  This means that while all of my preparatory work for the semester is completed, I still have quite a bit of grading to finish before I can call the semester complete and move onto more focused preparations for my comprehensive exam.

The last novel we covered in the class is the only one I hadn't read before: Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.  This novel seemed like a strange choice to me, but I have now come to believe it should be required reading for all perfectionists with control issues, like myself.  (Added bonus if you're from Portland, because that's where it's set.)  The main conflict of the novel is between two male characters: one of them is capable of altering reality through his dreams, and when his psychologist finds this out, he attempts to manipulate the patient's dreams in order to "improve" the world.  What the psychologist finds out, of course, is that he is rarely able to initiate the changes he'd like to see, and even when he succeeds, the changes he envisions don't turn out to have the results he intended.

Le Guin uses the characters to present two completely opposite worldviews: the psychologist who thinks every man's "purpose on earth" is "to do things, change things, run things, make a better world"  and the Daoist dreamer who says things like "I do know that it's wrong to force the pattern of things.  It won't do. It's been our mistake for a hundred years" (82).  In using these two men as exemplars of two oppositional ideologies, Le Guin is not particularly subtle.  The psychologist says things like "it's not how you get there, but where you get to that counts," while the dreamer disagrees, suggesting "We're in the world, not against it.  It doesn't work to try to stand outside things and run them that way.  It just doesn't work, it goes against life.  There is a way but you have to follow it.  The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be.  You have to be with it.  You have to let it be" (139, 140).  I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to reveal that in the end, the psychologist is responsible for his own demise after trying to take on too much and the dreamer is left to with the opportunity to continue following "the way."

So anyway, I've been giving this a lot of thought.  The other insights the book emphasizes are likewise thought provoking.  It suggests that you can't really know what is best for anyone else, and if you think you know how someone else should behave, it indicates your desire to exert control over them even if you think you have good intentions.  Likewise, the novel argues that even when you do a thing that you think is undoubtedly "good," you can't know for sure that it will only have positive outcomes.  I would argue that the book advocates trying to find your place in the world without indulging in the fantasy that you can exert ultimate control over anything that happens to you or to anyone else.  In a moment that was particularly resonant for me, the narrator suggests the dreamer "took it as it came.  He was living almost like a young child, among actualities only.  He was surprised by nothing, and by everything" (126).

I guess what the book has allowed me to do is achieve some critical distance from my own attitude about life, which has given me the opportunity to consider what some of its negative side effects might be.  I align with the psychologist, not the dreamer.  I don't often try to tell other people what to do, but I absolutely attempt to exert complete control over my own life.  I don't follow any path; I try to blaze my own.  On some level, becoming a mother has helped me to realize that this is an ultimately unsustainable way of being.  It has also made me fear that, because Nora feels like an extension of myself, I may someday find myself trying to govern her choices and their outcomes while ignoring the fact that doing so would be a glorified attempt to control her life in the same way I try to control my own.  I've written before about how spending time with Nora has helped me appreciate the benefits of slowing down, focusing on the moment I'm in, and worrying less about strict schedules and milestones.  Perhaps this is another way of saying she has helped me to recognize some of the benefits of living "among actualities only."  I already know some of life's greatest moments come from setting a goal, working toward it doggedly, and ultimately achieving it.  I think I'm only now beginning to learn that some completely unplanned and unforeseen moments can be equally gratifying.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to achieve a more harmonious balance between attempting to steer my own ship and learning to take things as they come.  I have the sense that this is likely to be something I'll continue trying to balance for the rest of my life.  I'm thankful to my professor for including this novel I never would have read otherwise on his syllabus.  This speaks to one of the reasons why literature is great: it gives us the chance to look at ourselves and our surroundings through different eyes.  It allows us, through the crafting of and the immersion within fictional worlds, to take a fresh look at the one we're living in.  Reading novels is one way of putting us in touch with what it means to be human.

Maybe you're more of a musical person than a literature person.  In that case, I've got something for you, too, off the Jason Mraz CD I just downloaded.  The general message is the same.




And I have one more, by Zac Brown Band: