The Giver

15 years ago, I read a beautiful book called The Giver, by Lois Lowry.  The year it was published, it won the Newberry, the award given to the best juvenile literature of the year.  It is a profound look at the human experience through the eyes of a boy who is coming of age in a dystopian world.  Before you roll your eyes and say "Oh, another one of those teenager dystopias...", understand that The Giver was written more than a decade before The Hunger Games, Divergent, and all the other books written by authors about my age who probably decided to write their respective books when they read The Giver in middle school.  Lowry's prose and her ability to get to the heart of the human condition in one children's novel puts her head and shoulders above the authors of all the trilogies you've been reading.

And The Maze Runner doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph as The Giver.  That's why this is a new paragraph.

The rights to make The Giver into a movie were sold long ago, and I've been waiting, mostly fearfully, to see what hash some production company would put on the big screen.  Last night, my wait ended, and there was no hash.  I'd like to thank Walden Media, Jeff Bridges, and everyone else who allowed the simplicity and profundity of the book to hit theaters untarnished.

What follows is my attempt to explain why last night was an incredible experience.  But as I've said before, narrative often explains better than propositional explanation.  Rule number 1 of writing: Show, don't tell.  I'm telling below, The Giver shows.  So, go read the book. 

The theme of the story is that human emotions are a treasure.  They are what allow us to make wise and ethical decisions, and they are what make life worth living.  We are so afraid of negative emotions - fear, pain, loss, anger, heartache.  And yet, without these, we can't experience joy, love, peace, hope, beauty.

If you've read the book or watched the movie, you'll understand why my husband and I were both weeping on and off in the next-to-highest row of the movie theater.  Sometimes it was the shots of little babies.  Sometimes it was the montage of colorful images meant to represent the human experience.  Sometimes it was the sheer force of the story.  Sometimes it was that I'm 8 months pregnant. 

Arthur was in our minds the whole time.  We cried because Arthur won't get to experience much of the messy beauty that is life.  He won't see a sunset or hear Christmas carols or laugh at frolicking animals.  We cried because he won't have to experience much the ugliness that is life.  He won't be abandoned or hungry or scared. 

But mostly we cried because we are so thankful for human emotion.  It is really no fun to feel the fear and pain we are feeling right now, or to anticipate the loss and heartache we will feel after Arthur is no longer with us.  But the whole point of The Giver is that it is this very emotion that makes us human.  We can't rid ourselves of the ability to lose without saying goodbye to the ability to love.

Usually I get mad at myself when I cry.  But last night I was happy that I was crying.  It means that I can experience the height of good and beauty as well as the depth of despair.  I can cry, but I can laugh too.  I can hurt, but I can also feel joy.  And those good gifts are so good that I would never trade them to spare myself from the ugly parts of life. 

I'm so glad I get to be pregnant.  To carry my husband's child.  To feel Arthur kicking inside of me.  To watch him blink on a sonogram.  To see my daughter "share" her lovey with the baby inside of me and give my tummy kisses.  What a beautiful part of human existence! 

I could only avoid saying goodbye to Arthur if I never got to be with him in the first place. 

"In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider:
God has made the one as well as the other," ~Ecclesiastes 7:14a (ESV)