Whose Life Is It Anyway?

“In life,” he said, “there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, are a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius’ point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn’t think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay. Or suppose you’re an usher in a wedding. From the groom’s point of view, he’s the major character: the others play supporting parts, even the bride. From your viewpoint, though, the wedding is a minor episode in the very interesting history of your life, and the bride and groom are minor figures. What you’ve done is choose to play the part of a minor character: It can be pleasant for you to pretend to be less important than you know you are, as Odysseus does when he disguises himself as a swineherd. And every member of the congregation at the wedding sees himself as the major character, condescending to witness the spectacle. So in this sense fiction isn’t a lie at all, but a true representation of the distortion that everyone makes of life

John Barth, End of the Road, pg. 88

Think of it: as we go about our daily lives, there is one, very important constant: peering out at the world each day, everything we experience is seen from our own perspective; our own, singular and unique (to us) point of view. No matter the situation, event or thought process, we each enter into it with an inherent bias that orients us to a place of supremacy, if not at least superiority. Most of us, based on human nature, will begin a transaction with another person with a built-in feeling that the approach we have in mind is a pretty good one, if not the best. A confident person, or even a timid and shy person, still starts from a position of prejudice or partiality for their own, personal slant on things.

And, in this context, as we go about our daily lives and embark on the various errands that we hope to accomplish each day, we are faced with a recurring competition—and, it is with ourselves. Every person that we come in contact with presents us with a challenge, though we are probably, mostly unaware that it is taking place: how much are we willing to extend ourselves to our fellow man? No, not just by being polite or politically correct, or even a tad generous in our dealings with other Homo sapiens. But, really how much do we empathize with, put ourselves in another’s place and actually attempt to relocate our own, specific way of thinking into another’s brain? Can we take our “selfish”, self-protective and territorial perspective and try to comprehend/experience what it’s like for them to look out at those who they encounter? Do we actually have the capacity to meaningfully understand their personal and instinctive point of view—as if it were our very own?

I’d venture to say that it’s a nearly impossible leap to negotiate successfully. Probably, the closest we as humans can come to achieving that switchover is to consider a parent’s empathy for their child—of any age. I’m not saying that every parent feels the same way or to the same degree. I’m only proposing that to achieve an almost complete negation of self to such an extent, and to replace it by virtually accepting the point of view of another human being is not intuitive, nor does it come easily.

Other than this extreme example, I believe that in most interactions with other folks, we are silently amending our empathetic response on the fly. To what extent are we willing to look at life while standing in their shoes? If we’re not willing to put ourselves out very much, then we’ll probably only be able to see most as very minor characters in the story of our own life. The little old lady who you smiled at and held the door for at the library? A kind gesture on your part, but also an opportunity for you to feel good about yourself with little or no cost to you, and no real involvement.

Or Tommy, the high schooler who pumps your gas and cleans your windshield down at Liberty Gas. Nice kid, but sometimes he likes to engage you in conversation and, it always seems to be on a day when you’re in a hurry. You really want Tommy to play the role of someone who just pumps your gas and lets you get on your way. A little unfeeling on your part, but hey, you’ve only got so much time available to spend on bit players in your busy life story.

At times, we make somewhat more of a connection with another person—for gratification of one sort or another—and yet, we still want to minimize the role that they play in our lives. For instance, Jake, the main character in Barth’s End of the Road:

assigns to Miss Rankin the role of Forty-Year-Old Pickup; …I had no interest whatever in the quite complex (and no doubt interesting, from another point of view) human being she might be apart from that role. What she should have done, it seems to me, assuming she was after the same thing I was after, was to assign me a role gratifying to her own vanity—say, The Fresh But Unintelligent Young Man Whose Body One Uses for One’s Pleasure Without Taking Him Seriously—and then we could have pursued our business with no wounds inflicted on either side.

John Barth, End of the Road, pg. 88

I have been of the opinion (unsupported by any serious data) that perhaps no group assigns the role of minor—almost insignificant, really—character to other human beings with as much consistency as the rich do. People born into wealth have been used to others supplying so many of their needs for so long that they’ve come to expect nothing less. Relying on those who are at their beck and call to provide all manner of services in a perfunctory, if respectful, manner. I don’t feel that this is due to meanness or the intention to be hurtful. It’s just something that’s become baked in the cake over the generations; presumed and expected.

Another thing to consider in all of this is just exactly how we feel about being only a minor player in the lives of so many other people—friends, relatives, business associates. Here we are going on our merry way through life, taking for granted that we are the center of the (our own) universe. Even those of us who are not particularly prideful or narcissistic are pretty much predisposed to proceed down the same path—we are like the proverbial sun with various planets circling us each day. What a shock if/when it finally dawns on us that as far as our place in the story of others, we’ve been assigned a minor role of some kind—and, probably have for a long time. William, in Russell Hoban’s The Turtle Diary, expresses it this way:

A frightening thought had been growing in me. I’d always thought that I was the central character in my own story, but now it occurred to me that I might in fact be only a minor character in someone else’s. Miss Neap’s perhaps. And I didn’t even know her story.

Russell Hoban, The Turtle Diary, pg. 186

In terms of the dynamics involved in human relationships, I’m reminded of a memory that my friend Richie shared with me recently. As a sophomore in high school, he was a member of the marching band. At one football game, his bandmates were spiritedly critiquing the opponent’s band, comparing performances. Richie remembers thinking: “It’s a football game; we are not the story.” Pretty insightful at such a tender age. So, yes, with the focus on the game being played, the members of both bands were most likely seen by spectators as just minor characters, movie extras. In the scheme of things that day on the gridiron, I’m pretty sure—in the eyes of the coaches and football players—they certainly thought that they were the stars of the show.

Richie came up with another keen observation around the same time. And, he expressed it to me this way: “Everybody lives in their own little world and we are each in charge of our own spotlight.” So, we set the stage, as it were, in scenes from our life trajectory, we come up with a working story line and assign specific roles to those who appear in the various vignettes of our lives. And, being in control of the spotlight, we get to focus on whatever aspect of the story we deem most relevant at any given moment. Barth, in End of the Road, spells it out this way:

Now, not only are we the heroes of our own life stories— we’re the ones who conceive the story, and give other people the essence of minor characters. But, since no man’s life story as a rule is ever one story with a coherent plot, we’re always reconceiving just the sort of hero we are, and consequently just the sort of minor roles other people are supposed to play.

John Barth, End of the Road, pg. 88

Over time then, as our life story continues to play out, the manner in which we look at and tell our tale will evolve. There will be some inevitable editing of events and episodes, either due to the fog of memory or the desire to make certain aspects appear either more positive, more glamorous or more plausible to our audience — as well as to ourselves.

I’ll conclude with the following excerpt from The Sense of an Ending, in which Julian Barnes explains that not only do we reshuffle and rejig our life’s narrative in the re-telling, but if we live long enough there will few or none around to call us on certain aspects of it. And, while that story of ours may seem to be fiction to some, it is most likely—as was noted by Barth earlier in this piece— just a “true representation of the distortion that everyone makes of life.” It’s ours to tell it the way we see it— or, the way that we want to see it. Because, in the end, it is our own story, about how we interpret our own life and we are always going to be the main character in it:

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending, pg. 104