The Way We Are

I recently finished Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry. It’s the first novel of his I’ve ever read. I had only ever read his essays before. But by the time I finished the book, it was obvious to me that fiction, because it’s storytelling, has a way of turning the abstract ideas discussed in non-fiction into something that feels alive and tangible. Nathan Coulter is a coming-of-age narrative that portrays particular people living in a particular time in a particular place. There’s no plot and thus no story climax, but its description of day-to-day events, moments between people, and developments like birth, death, bad weather, and conflict are impactful nonetheless. I appreciate that the stories are told with hardly any commentary or sensationalism. Whatever drama there is exists in the account itself.

There’s a section toward the end, however, that offers more commentary than elsewhere in the book, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a scene that follows another in which the narrator’s (Nathan Coulter’s) teenaged brother, Tom, pays Nathan and their uncle, Burley, a brief visit after a period of estrangement from the whole family—an estrangement for which Nathan’s father is largely responsible.

He [Daddy] was sitting at the table with his supper dishes empty in front of him, eating a piece of corn bread. We pulled out chairs and sat down; and Uncle Burley began telling him about Brother, where he was and what he was doing and what his plans were and what kind of people he was living with. Daddy didn’t say anything while Uncle Burley was talking. He sat there looking at his plate and taking a bite off the corn bread now and then.

When Uncle Burley had finished I said, “He’s not mad at you anymore.”

And then Daddy cried. He didn’t say that he was glad Brother wasn’t mad at him, or that he was sorry for their fight. He just sat there, looking at his plate and chewing on a bite of corn bread, with tears running down his cheeks.

I could have cried myself. Brother was gone, and he wouldn’t be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves. And if we’d been other people it wouldn’t have mattered. If we’d been Mushmouth or Jig Pendleton or that dog with the roman candle tied to its tail, it would have been the same; we’d have to suffer whatever it was that they suffered because they were themselves. And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.

What I love about this scene (and Nathan’s commentary) is that it doesn’t spiritualize human conflict or attempt to impose meaning upon their story arc. Neither does it go to a place of despair. Nathan describes their interactions and then makes an observation: that the particular contours of their suffering are determined by the way they are intersecting with the way other people are. This resonates so much with me because I come from a family that has experienced generational trauma, highly disruptive mental illness, clashes between honor-shame culture and guilt-innocence culture, clashes between pre-industrial and post-industrial values, and more… and these conflicts could not be simplistically bridged or healed through some magical exchange of words, the application of modern therapeutic devices, exorcistic rituals, or pharmacological interventions.

That’s not to say that strategic conversations, therapists/counselors, deliverance prayer, and psychotropic medications have no role in improving relationships or the human condition. They absolutely do play a role. It’s just that these tools—the chariots and horses¹ of today—are not as powerful in our hands as we’re tempted to think they are. And sometimes, they merely prolong our delusion that we, armed with the right combination of things, can transform ourselves and the people in our lives. It keeps us kicking against the goads. The reality is that we are the way we are for a lot of reasons that extend far beyond our individual life spans. We are the way we are because of the people who came before us, and the people who came before them, and the people who came before them. We are the way we are because of the places we’ve been but also because of the places others have been.

1. Psalm 20:7