Lessons is a strange novel.
You can almost feel the age of author in its main character Roland. He’s through a lot in his life. In his teens, he was seduced by his piano teacher. In his first marriage, his wife abandoned him and their son to pursue her career as a novelist. In his second marriage, which comes in his late years, his wife was diagnosed with cancer in its very late stages. They married anyway.
Life’s not kind to him, yet he remained hopeful. Not that toxic positivity, mind you, he just chilled. It’s as if he’s always trying to figuring out his own emotions according to the society’s rules rather than his basic instincts. Should I feel abandoned? Should I feel angry? Should I feel mistreated? He’s not sure most of the time. He’s always late to the party in a weird way, which is rather alien to any narrative we’ve seen in other literary works, to say the least.
But there’s something tangible within this approach.
Since Roland’s almost never mad, we could actually grasp his threads of thoughts clearly without any interference from your typical main character archetype bullshit. He’s hotheaded so he always rush into things. She’s coolheaded so she always plan carefully before robbing a bank. No, none of that. Roland is the prototype of a human being in that he always hesitated to fall into one distinct mood, but had this range of emotions running not amok but silently underneath. He’s not bound by any social norms for his behaviors, heck, even his thoughts.
Even while facing his previous lovers, both of whom treated him poorly, he could grasp his mind and let his anger dissipate into the ether. He left his piano teacher at peace without resorting to the police even after being offered the chance. He left his first wife alone after finding her out, then gave up on getting even and forgave her in the end. It isn’t that he didn’t have emotions, but it never got in his way of thinking. He just saw everything differently.
How?
I guess that’s where the age thing came to work. As a man of his age, Ian McEwan already experienced so much in life that he won’t have anything getting into his head. I doubt his main character can remain so imbedded within his own thoughts when the author’s still young. But that remained to be seen in his early works. However, that unique trait actually came in handy for this book, making an interesting hero than most typical characters. We could bear witness of Roland’s confusion as a student, a husband, a father and a son, and rethink our roles in each of these relationships and our responsibilities and experiences.
When you’re so close to death, nothing matters. It’s OK to be mistreated, betrayed, abandoned, just as it’s OK to be loved, cherished, respected. Those things always come about hand in hand. Whatever happened, happened. You can dwell on your emotions or think about them forever, or just move on. Everybody has their own decision on how to treat you, but only you can decide how to live with yourself. There’s no formula or regulation on any of your emotions. The only one standing in your way of a peaceful and calm mind, is you.
That being said, Roland still felt pain in each and every turn. He’s not immune to them, just more tolerable, more adjustable, more suitable in coping with them. He knew the default answer to all those situations, yet he always doubted whether that’s his true feelings or just what’s perceived as the norm. What’s true was almost always hidden beneath the scorched surface, under the many layers of ruins in the name of love. It’s not that easy to peel all those layers back and touch the truth because we human beings are social animals, thus we tend to abide by the rules of our peers, which come in varied ways. But if you let yourself immerse in those conflicting feelings long enough, you could gradually see the truth for yourself.
Just like there’s no other person exactly the same as you, nobody could feel the same as you, which means you could have your own feelings unlike any other human being at every turn of the corner. But we always forgot that, don’ we? We get mad when it’s time to get mad, we get sad when circumstances said so. You should be happy. You should remain hopeful. You should this, you should that. Without the collective minds, where should our own minds resides? The ability to actually listen to our own hearts, touch our own nerves, act upon our own thoughts were so rare that most of us gave up a long time ago. We dare not even to feel for ourselves, which is a shame itself.
Roland wasn’t successful or something like that. He got lots of potential in playing piano but he never purposefully pursued that career, only dwelling on playing casually in a bar. He’s not full of himself to try to conquer the world, yet he’s so full of his own thoughts that he decided to live his own life no matter what.
He never lived for another person, not even for an instant.
Yes, he single handedly raise his son, which is no small effort. Yes, he held his head high in his political practices even though the cause was lost a long time ago. Yes, he was frustrated by his wife’s decision. But none of these stopped him from REACTING. He just carried on all by himself without change his course of life because of anybody or any event. In the end, he always did what he desired.
And how liberating that way of living is? I can only imagine.
Yet what touched me most is his first wife’s course of life. She didn’t want to repeat her mother’s life which is abandoning her own writer’s dream and settling for a family. So she abandoned her own family and turned all her energies into writing and birthed 17 books in her remaining life. (Just like Ian, how odd?) She was living alone all by herself, with a leg amputated because of heavy smoking. Is there more value or meaning in those 17 books than her husband and son? Nobody can decide but herself. And she traded her family for a writing career and that’s it. She didn’t get to keep both, so she chose one over the other, and had to live with the decision. There’s no what if, no unbeaten path, no parallel timeline, no multiverse, just her decision and her path forward.
So do we.
Is it worth it? Nobody knows, not even her.
But that’s OK, we really don’t need an answer anyway. We get some, we lost some, nobody gets to win around every corner. Just enjoy our miserable life as much as we can, enjoy the bright days as well as the gloomy ones. And I guess that’s about it, really.
Don’t you think?
