HONESTY AND THE LENS

I haven’t posted in a while. I’m sorry it has been that way. School got the better of me and no matter how much that’s a typical excuse, when I say it, it’s the truth.

There’s something in particular I’d love to post from Suzyo’s journal but I can’t. The pages the writings are on are not in the best of conditions and the words on some parts have become faint with time. I know the overarching story he was trying to put across so with a little research I can fill in the gaps. Only then will I be ready to post it.

Be that as it may, here goes nothing.

My love for novels is inexpressible. I don’t see myself ever stopping to read them, even when I have a fringe of grey-white hair around my balding. 

People tend to think that there are no lessons to be learnt from novels, that they are merely stories, but that’s not true. Every book - if read generously - is valuable and worthy of attention. Well, save for those that may be in certain senses ‘destructive’ like books by E. L. James

I recently read The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes, a novel, and I did learn quite a bit from it.

I’ll try not to ruin the story.

The first part of the novel is set in 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in a hospital, she can remember nothing - not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband.

All the letters that B and Jennifer wrote to each other are in the novel. The honesty in them is admirable. It shows you that theirs was a love affair that meant something. B was a man who cracked himself open in front of the woman he loved; he sought to understand her and tried to protect her, even from herself. When he couldn’t save her, he removed himself to the other side of the world and, quite likely, sacrificed himself. And Jennifer mourned him for forty years.

Sometimes, if you pay attention at least, the lesson in a novel is easy to see. B’s story shows what honesty can do to a person. 

Tell me something, are you happy in this modern world? Maybe you are being honest with yourself, maybe you are not. Jordan B. Peterson, the Canadian Clinical psychologist who wrote the book 12 Rules For Life, says, “the act of honesty is particularly important when it challenges what we know and rely on, leaving us upset or destabilized.” If B chose not to be honest, he would be denying that honesty makes the best use of future possibilities. Honesty was the light he had in the darkness of a life lived without Jennifer. And so, if your life is not what it could be, try being honest. If you feel unhappy, weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, or if you’re wallowing in nihilism, try being honest with yourself. Even when you don’t get what you want, honesty is serenity.

The second part of the novel is set years later, in 2003. A journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter that B wrote in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance.

Ellie’s love life was complicated. She falls in love with someone she shouldn’t have. She defends herself in a conversation with a friend by saying she didn’t mean to fall in love. But she made a choice. We all make choices. Even though we may sometimes feel transported by something, even though we may feel pulled to some places, we are hardly ever victims of circumstance. Every act has a consequence. The world is divided into people who can see that, and make a decision accordingly, and those who just go for what feels good at the time.

The lesson there may or may not be as easy to see. Sometimes, books only make sense when read through a lens. The lens being how you find yourself in a book or parts of it. Ellie falls in love with someone she shouldn’t have. As time goes by she’s faced with a choice to be made. She could either act accordingly or do what would feel good at the time. Here’s the lens I used or how I related to her story: You and I have fallen in love with the world. A world filled with vanity, a world that is passing away and a world that only leads to death.  Time and time again we have heard this and also how that while we still loved this world the Sovereign Ruler of the skies sent His Son to die in our place. And we know that this is love beyond measure. And so we’re faced with a choice, either to act accordingly or to do what feels good at this time. Sadly, we choose to lose ourselves to the temporary.

If you read to be moved, books can expand your universe and change parts of the way you think. Every book has a way in which it can inform and widen your thoughts about certain subjects. Pay attention as you read and you’ll see.

Signing off,

Akwasi Dzifa.