Of Comics and Blenders

The taxi turned on the road through the median, headed in the opposite direction from which it had been going when it stopped to pick up Mr. Rohland and me on the curb, and back out into the flow of five or so “lanes” of traffic. I looked out the window from the row of concrete apartment buildings, across the Corniche to the exclusive trade-specific clubs which dotted the shoreline of the Mediterranean. And then I sat in the back and thought about reality.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now. The blog post that I wrote last night was a bit of a prelude to this one. I think I’ll begin tonight’s edition with another quote from the same book I quoted there, Do Justice. I read two more excellent, thought-provoking essays in it this afternoon, one about short-term missions and another about disillusionment and social justice. Even though I read them after my pondering session in the taxi, they seem to be the best place to start. This quote comes from the second essay, entitled “Dreamers vs. Dreamingers: Don’t Get Cynical, Get Even” by Adam Smit.

“Disillusionment is the shock, the heartbreak that comes from being ambushed by the awfulness of the world. It takes the idealistic wind out of your sails; it shoots you out of the sky.


What gets me frustrated is when I see some people racing off toward that brick wall with a big D painted on it. They hit it and fall hard. They sink like Peter trying to walk on water—except in this story they go all the way to the bottom. That’s when you’ve become cynical. When the disillusionment has truly felled you. When you’re no longer looking out for the good. Others do what really drives me nuts: They treat disillusionment like an ugly pink eviction notice and they slip it into the bookshelf hoping it will blend in with the other printed material. They learn to ignore it. They buy the groceries, read the funny pages, raise the kids. They forget about that awfulness they caught of a glimpse of once upon a time. It’s there, but if you talk about the kind of blender you want to buy and the rising price of cable TV for long enough and with enough people who think likewise, it can start to feel like maybe these are really the things that matter. Still others live in a fantasy world, constructed by their egos or religion or just plain naiveté." (Italics mine.) (64-65).

“It’s there, but if you talk about the kind of blender you want to buy and the rising price of cable TV for long enough and with enough people who think likewise, it can start to feel like maybe these are really the things that matter.”

What is the “it” that’s there? (Yes, the awfulness. But there’s more than that. How else would we know when to call something “awful”?)

And what are those things that really matter? (I think we recognize that there is something that matters, or else we wouldn’t be asking the question in the first place. Atheistic existentialism simply isn’t very attractive.)

I think the answer to both of those questions is reality. I don’t mean “reality” in the sense of “Those questions are really significant.” Rather, I mean that “reality” is the “it” that is out there and is also what really matters. So naturally the next question is “What is reality?” But since that’s far too daunting of a metaphysical question for me to conquer in a blog post, I’ll stick to the via negativa. I’m much better at critiquing than I am at producing a fully satisfying answer. Besides, doing so gives me an opportunity to talk about comics and blenders.

What is there to say about comics and blenders? Plenty, I’m sure. Each of these items has arguably had a sufficiently significant effect on modern society to merit at least one photographic coffee table book. And while I suspect that I—or if not me, definitely my younger brother—could spend a very pleasant weekend poring over detailed accounts of the historical forces which spawned, shaped, and defined cartoon strips and liquidizers, I’m also quite convinced that doing so is ultimately little more than a good way to pass the time.

Isn’t that why retirees collect coffee table books? All things considered, they’re a fairly good diversion. There’s nothing wrong with comics and blenders, but there’s nothing ultimately significant about them either. The problem occurs when people live as if there is. And even though I didn’t realize it at the time, that’s what I was thinking about this morning in the backseat of the taxi.

I know that there’s more to life than the way that I’ve been living it for the past few days.

It’s not unusual for me to be aware of that fact. Sometimes I think that the influence of the gospel on the way I live is manifested most in this abiding sense that there’s always more. More to be seen, tasted, pondered, reveled in—because there’s always more to God. But my awareness of this “more-ness” has been heightened during the past week that I’ve spent in Egypt.

I grew up thinking about the “more” that was out there, and now I’m in a place where I’d expect to find it. For the past few years (or at least since I visited Malawi) I have tended to assume that life has a greater tinge of reality for those who live in the throes of poverty, particularly in the developing world. I thought that those for whom the avoidance of hunger was a more common topic of conversation than the features of various blenders were at least one step closer to the big questions of life, and hence to reality itself. It’s a much smaller step to “What’s the purpose of life?” from “How can I feed my family?” than it is from “How many speeds do I want on my blender for the kitchenette in our guest room?”.

That’s why I identify so strongly with Adam Smit’s disillusionment with people who seem to be wholly content with their present “realities”: I assume they’re hiding from something, because it’s so apparent to me that there’s more out there. And I can’t understand why someone who realizes that could be content before she has done a little exploring. But I’m equally befuddled by those who realize it, have done a little exploration, but then decide that they would rather to stay inside rather than go outside to play.

Being in Egypt has reminded me that one’s location has very little to do with the depth of one’s experience of reality. I thought I knew that when Dr. Ringenberg had us memorize quotes in Honors’ Foundations of Christian Thought my first semester at Taylor, and I selected this gem from Susanne Langer:

“The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of the formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences.”

Evidently I didn’t know it. I’ve been in Alexandria for over a week now, but I still know very little of the life of the five million people who surround me. I don’t speak their language—my Arabic phrases could be counted on one hand. I don’t really understand their culture. I haven’t had any conversations to speak of with Egyptians. In short, I stick out like the long-haired blonde foreigner that I am. And that’s just what I should have expected.

But I didn’t expect that. I hoped that I would absorb by simple osmosis that extra tinge of reality that I believed to be the exclusive possession of the developing world. And of course it’s simply not that simple.

Yet reality is still here. So perhaps I still will experience it. But even if I do, it’ll be with the knowledge that reality is not ameliorated by eccentric adventures in exotic lands. If it’s deeper than comics and blenders, it must be deeper than camels and pyramids.