Naturally enough

Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the harmonious functioning of the world. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be, and he laughs at the idea that he might equally well be wearing a Roman toga or medieval armor. <…> He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physiological needs which are considered private as discreetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human societies.

Czeslaw Milosz The Captive Mind

 Everyone has his own past, fascinating stories of his own. However, in most cases we don’t consider our stories being something outstanding, something uncommon. I remember this one girl who I worked as a partner with in my creative writing class. The task was to get some story from your partner and to write it down in attractive form. When it was her turn to tell me the story, she shrugged and said: “I’m so sorry, I really would like to tell you something interesting, something thrilling, but… Nothing uncommon ever happened to me. I always had an average life: parents, school, college, friends…”

I was doing my best asking her millions of questions, jumping from one topic to another, trying to discover at least traces of interesting story. We ended up with her memories of her family trip to Sri Lanka, which was not super exciting but that was the best we found for those 15 minutes that we had for interview. And it wasn’t that she had such a boring and banal life that there was nothing to talk about. The point was that she didn’t see her life as being unusual, as unnatural, as being different from anyone else’s.

This thought from Czeslaw Milosz’s book The Captive Mind made me thinking of this human tendency – considering the order he lives as natural. However, the notion natural was created by the human being himself. Nobody knows what is natural, but everyone has his own definition of natural based on the way that the world around him (including himself) lives. When I was back in Russia 5-6 years ago and I was watching typical American movies showing typical American college life, this life order was unnatural for me, it was fascinating because it was different from the life around me. And those movies attracted me by being different from the natural (on my scale) life order. The same thing I noticed here just in the opposite direction: for American students movies or videos about life in Russia (especially, in Russian small towns and villages) seem incredibly interesting and exotic. Mostly, for only one, the same reason – it’s unnatural for them. It’s a little bit sad to realize that this curiosity about other cultures and other countries is based not on the longing to explore the world around, but mostly on this thrilling and arousing adrenaline idea of the dangerous, unexplored unnatural world somewhere overseas. Something new, something unusual sounds much more attractive than old and familiar.

Another sad part of this story is that pretty often we don’t find natural way of living exciting: it’s a routine, something that has always been that way and is not going to ever change. We regard it as inconceivable that the natural order we get used to may suddenly crash and we might be returned to a state of a primitive man. Or that this quiet and peaceful world around might suddenly become a nightmare where brothers are killing their father and each other. Or that this full of parks and national forests region might turn to a desert where we be happy to find a tiny oasis with drinkable water. But the thing is that for some people it is natural life now and they consider our life is unnatural.

It’s a deep philosophical question but what was important for me in this tendency was a writer’s role, a writer’s challenge. A writer should be the exceptional one, who doesn’t have a notion of naturalness, the one who sees everything around as unnatural and therefore attractive and thrilling. The biggest challenge for a writer is to find the way to persuade his readers that natural things are not boring, to find the words to show this unnaturalness of the world that a reader observes every day. It’s about showing the alternative way of looking at familiar things. And that is one of the hardest challenges for a writer. Because he is a human being and his life seems to be so natural and boring if he doesn’t travel a lot and doesn’t write about exceptional discoveries or cruel wars…