A Hot Mess

March 28th, 2010Blog0 comments

So I’m doing research for this play I’m working on, and our good friend Rick sent me this TED Talk that he thought would be useful: Rick Smolan Tells the Story of a Girl.

I love TED Talks and I really liked this one. But it was the user comments about the piece that got my brain moving. Check ‘em out — there’s a divide between people who believe that a form of casual racism occurred with this girl’s “rescue” and people who think that this fellow did the right thing. After all, he was a self-admitted young man with limited experience, and he was just trying to do what he thought was right.

My thought on the entire story is that it ended well — whether the right thing was done is difficult to say. I have a feeling that this girl would’ve grown up happy and fairly well adjusted had she stayed in Korea. It seems like she would’ve thrived anywhere, really.

My point here is that the world is a complex and crazy place, and with our limited level of visibility, we’re just trying to do the right thing. Or the wrong thing. Or how about this: We’re just trying to do things. Whether they work out in the end is a subjective and unpredictable thing. So we’re all just trying to do things that seem to fulfill our interests. Good, bad, these results are invisible until later.

Real life is a mess. It’s a hot mess. The best laid plans gang aft agley. And even when things go wrong, they might lead to a place that is better than what we had hoped for.

So in determining whether the right outcome is occurring, I think the best question to ask is this:

ARE YOU HAPPY? Y/N

Clearly, as a result of this particular episode all of the participants in Mr. Smolan’s story are happy, so I think he did the right thing, racism or not.

How this relates to writing: In all of my work, if you were to ask any of my characters at the beginning of the story “ARE YOU HAPPY?”, they would all, unequivocally and truthfully, circle “N”. They might want to circle “Y”, but that wouldn’t be the truth.

Now: By the end of the story they may circle “Y”, they may still circle “N”, but whatever the case, they worked incredibly, superhumanly hard to find that happiness.

Trying to get it: Now that’s the story.