“This is what there is.”
In my younger and more vulnerable (read: depressed) years, I'd probably tell you that my favorite book is Hamlet and that nothing matters. Now, though I am still young and vulnerable, and Hamlet is still in my top five, some things have changed. Thanks to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, therapy, and taking a much needed break from Shakespeare, I'm here to tell you that some things matter, and that life is beautiful. Sure, in the grand scheme of the universe nothing really matters, but right here and now, on this pale blue dot, a lot of things matter to me. And I love making things all about me.
During my much needed break from Shakespeare for the past 15 months, I have read trashy romance novels, philosophical explorations of human existence, and my favorite: literary fiction. My most recent read was The English Teacher, by Lily King, which I will now discuss at length. But don't get it twisted, this is not one of my (now rare) book reviews. It is more of an exploration into how Lily King singlehandedly changed my perspective on existence. (This is an exaggeration, obviously. Many people, experiences, and stories have shaped my perspective on existence, and I hope that my perspective continues to change. But Lily King has given me the words to describe this current perspective of mine.)
The English Teacher follows the lives of Vida and Peter Avery, a single mother and her 15-year-old son, each haunted by their pasts. Peter is haunted by the mysteries of his past, while Vida is haunted by the inescapability of memory. Now, because this is not a book review, I will not provide you with a synopsis or quippy anecdotes. Instead, I want to tell you about the very last line of the book, which made me ugly cry. I don't believe that sharing with you the last line of the novel is a spoiler–in fact, I think it might make you want to read this book–but in case you do, feel free to say goodbye here. As always, thanks for reading.
Okay, for those of you still here, the novel ends with these sentences: "This is it and I am right here. This is what there is." This line made me cry because of one simple word: "what." For as long as I have been conscious, I have been incredibly anxious about the passage of time. I went through life with an attitude of "this is all there is." I was (and still am, to an extent) very worried about how I used my time. I would find myself trying to give moments in my life a distinct label: happy, sad, scary, boring. In a journal entry from April of 2020, I wrote: "I haven't felt like this in a very long time, but today I just felt happy." Even in my recognition of progress, I was grasping for that label of happiness. But I wrote that journal entry in one of my younger and more vulnerable years. My efforts to define happiness were motivated not by appreciation but by a hope that I could find a formula to continue being happy. I was so certain that happiness was a science, an equation to be solved.
Until I finished reading The English Teacher, I didn't have the words to describe my beliefs about happiness and existence, but I think I've been subconsciously heading there for a long time. After my sister died, I experienced a shift in my attitude toward life. While I didn't know it yet, I was well on my way to replacing "this is all there is," with "this is what there is."
For a lot of my adolescence, I was terrified that if my sister died, I'd be unable to go on living. I was terrified that if I lost her, I'd lose myself. But when my dad woke me up and said, "it's time," and I watched from the couch as my mother told her it was okay to let go, I realized I was still me. I was still breathing even though she wasn't. I was still me as I watched my dad unplug the oxygen tank. I was still me when I left the house before I could watch them take her away. I was still me when I came home, and the dog was lying on the hospital bed where my sister had been. Despite my biggest fear coming true, I was still me, I was still alive. For so much of my life, "all there was," was my sister and me. And then it was just me, and I didn't die, and I didn't lose myself, and I didn't go crazy. And somewhere in the space between having a sister and not having one, the seeds of "this is what there is" started to grow in me.
My sister told us before she died that it would suck, but that it would be okay. I felt I owed it to her to be okay. Or at least to try. I owed it to her to shift my perspective from the restrictive "all" to the indefinite "what." (For those of you who are grammar nerds, yes, I know that "what" is not technically an indefinite pronoun, but in this case, it is providing a level of open-endedness.) When Lily King wrote, "This is it and I am right here. This is what there is," I was transported back to the moment my sister died. This is it, she is gone, and I am still here. I am right here. Here in this moment, which will pass just as all moments do, because time does not stop just because something bad happens. This is it, and I am a victim of time. This is it, and my sister will now only exist in the past tense, and I am right here, watching it happen. But this isn't all there is. This is what there is, but there is also love, and laughter, and sunlight on my pillow on a Sunday morning, and a hug from an old friend, and a song that suddenly makes me cry.
After I put down The English Teacher, but before I had stopped crying, I wrote myself a note. It is titled "this is what there is," and it is a list of books (and plays) that make me believe in the importance of living, whether life is meaningless or not:
1. Endgame, by Samuel Beckett
2. Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
3. The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro
4. Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger
5. The English Teacher, by Lily King.
If you've ever had the poor judgment to ask me for a book recommendation, chances are I have given you between one and four of these titles. I also probably told you to read Hamlet, but that didn't make the cut because (spoiler alert) pretty much everyone dies at the end, and while I still believe it's a nearly perfect exploration of human existence, I am currently more into books where people survive despite life's many horrors. If you're interested, check some of these books out. I bet they'll make you feel some sort of way, and maybe even have some thoughts about existence.
P.S.
You may have noticed that I employed both the Oxford Comma and the em-dash in this piece. That does not mean it was written by AI. For those of you who think that good grammar implies something was written by AI, please take ten seconds to educate yourself and stop offending people who are good at writing by making Chat GPT ask your boss for time off.
