Eleanor Oliphant is definitely one of my most memorable characters. I have not yet met a character as socially clueless and yet as endearing as Eleanor. To me, this story is one of available possibilities in spite of sad realities.
I must confirm that this book is not a romantic love story. Sure, there were hints that a romance might bloom and I was worried that the old formula of boy-loves-girl-then-changes-and-saves-her would be used, but thank goodness the story did not take that direction.
This story is more about the necessity of human connection and how simple, but genuine acts of caring and kindness influence and touch another human being. It is also about forgiveness for one’s own self, moving on from the past, restarting a life, and learning to love one’s own identity and worth. It is about understanding what it means to be truly alive as opposed to daily survival.
Fine is a response we often absentmindedly say about how we truly are. We have different definitions of being fine. We have to understand well and resolve on what it takes to be completely fine. Often, the process involves either asking for or accepting help when it knocks on our doors.
Read this one because I missed reading Grisham. This book’s quite slow for me, and it’s rather unexciting and more laid-back. (I don’t know why some books marketed under the Mystery/Thriller genre cram all the mystery and action towards the end. What’s up with that? I just don’t get it.)
What I liked, though was that this book was about books, and celebrated the love for books. Also, references to writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Plus, I am fond of smart, calculating, ambitious, and magnetically charming characters, like Mr. Bruce Cable.
A month ago, I was in bed while my thoughts meandered elsewhere. I had been thinking about a lot of things, specifically about the circumstances that I’ve been exposed to lately, not just my personal experiences, but also about the current (hard) life experiences of the people I care about.
I cannot talk some sense into myself from psychoanalyzing things—seeking meaning or teachings about the thoughts that ambush and grip me. I never did arrive at anything that night, so I started with the phrase: I don’t know. Now because I didn’t know, it only meant that I just had to surrender it all by having faith and trust in God.
But, how do I create a concrete idea out of those keywords? I didn’t exactly knew how, but the base idea was that if all of these varied things piled up in us, how would they look like? I envisioned a pyramid, but that God would not be at the top, He would be at the bottom, being who He is—the Base, the Foundation, the Only-One-Who-Can-Carry-and-Support-all-the-Weight.
I had no other idea how to describe what I was really thinking that night plus, I was already too tired to pore through my mind, so that the only logical thing to do to preserve the idea was to simply draw it, like such:
Snapshot captured from my notebook. Sorry for the inkblots. I know I write too hard on paper, especially if I am in a hurry.Yikes!
So I’ve set that thought aside, but little did I know that a couple of weeks later while reading Mister God, This is Anna, I would then read this line:
…it must be wrong to expect words to bear the weight of the meaning of the word ‘God.’ No! It must be that ‘God’ is the word that bears the weight of all the other words. So the pyramid idea of words with ‘God’ on the top is WRONG SIDE UP; so turn it UPSIDE DOWN. That’s better. Now the whole pyramid of words is standing on its apex like the numbers. The apex of the ‘pyramid’ is ‘God,’ and that must be right because now the word ‘God’ carries the weight and meaning of all the other words.
…We’ve all got to bear the weight of our own actions. We’ve all got to be responsible—either now or later.
Can you imagine how I must have felt the moment I read those lines? My heart was drumming in my chest and I was holding my breath—how could Fynn have known or, how could I have known? I had to close the book just to linger and to savor the strange and beautiful moment—one I would not dare name as coincidence. I am once again left in awe, but most definitely grateful for such rare meetings. I would not dare, too to claim that Fynn’s words would be some sort of validation or negation for my idea. I guess, I just am overwhelmed with this quiet satisfaction about the reality of perpetual thoughts.
You see, Fynn and I had different illustrations—he thinks of God as the apex of the pyramid; I think of God as the base of the pyramid—but both of us understood that “God carries the weight and meaning of all the other words.”
We may have different illustrations, different interpretations, different means of breathing life or setting an idea into motion; but, in the end, the basis, the core value of an idea can never be diminished. It is a light that cannot be dimmed. I’d like to think that ideas select its potential resource—perhaps one with the right energy or power or stability. It knows where it can reside or how it can multiply.
Ideas are alive. They are in the air we breathe. And whether we are aware of them or not, they come for us, become part of us, until the only thing we are left to do is to release them back in the air—whether in action, in purpose, or as an ingredient for bigger, brighter, and better ideas. Thoughts are indeed perpetual, and it is our responsibility to help pass them on.
Take hold of your ideas. Never belittle nor dismiss them no matter how silly or small or strange they sound. Your ideas are alive. Just know that they will live and relive at their own time. Your thoughts, our thoughts, they are perpetual. They live on.
“Play something…Something that says we won’t forget them…”
He recalled…a song from the Philippines that his teacher said was “sad enough to melt the phonograph needle.” El Maestro had taught it to Frankie. Its title was “Maalaala Mo Kaya,” written by a Filipino composer named Constancio de Guzman. (“An elegant name,” El Maestro had mused.) It depicted two people from different social classes promising not to forget their love. On the record label, the translated title was “Will You Remember?”
If we must grow wiser as sons and daughters, let us grow wiser with the pursuit of continuously rekindling our relationships with our parents.
If we must go on our paths to understand our identities, let us go in the paths of understanding our families’ identities as well.
There is always so much to learn from our parents; there is always so much to learn about our parents.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
LIFE NOTES 