Today we were out the door around 6 for our long drive from Tacoma to Orem. Lily wanted to do the first leg, and then give me the second leg of the trip. I have to say, Lily got the hardest part, and navigated it perfectly. And what was the hardest part? Within an hour of leaving, we hit a snow storm going through the mountains on I-90. At one point we saw a sign that said, “all vehicles chain”. We were already most the way up the mountain and we didn’t have chains and the snow was sticking to the ground. We didn’t feel we had much of a choice, so Lily just drove very very slowly, and very very cautiously, and we made it over the summit and down the other side without incident. I was so relieved! I can’t believe I was thinking we could have drove to Seattle in the winter! It’s a good thing Lily talked us out of it!
Once we were out of the snow storm, we stopped in Yakima for breakfast. Yakima had a sign saying it was the Palm Springs of Washington which cracked us up as we drove around it just because we didn’t know what about the town would make it comparable to Palm Springs. I told Lily that being like Palm Springs was an important communal illusion for the community to live under to give their lives meaning and purpose. This was a joke that was referencing the mind-blowing audio book we were listening to by Earnest Becker called, “The Fear of Death.” Lily chose it. She is my conduit to so much knowledge. The book blew my mind (especially since Becker wrote it while dying of cancer and it won the Pulitzer prize) and took the perspective that everyone is clinging to illusions (I prefer the word constructs) such as religion, social structures, routines, hobbies, beliefs etc, which are all fictional, but that are nevertheless necessary for functioning well. The person who spends too much time thinking about life’s absurdity and chaos, who is not propped up by illusions, might be closer to the truth than others, but is also unable to function well. So the neurotics in our society are those unable to properly adopt illusion (which is happening at an increasing rate due to the decline of religious fervor) or process the reality of absurdity through artistic expression, and healthy people are those able to buy into illusion, especially those reinforced by the community and/or able to process the reality of absurdity through artistic expression. As illusions are a necessary part of functional living, the question then becomes which illusions to adopt, and Becker submits that illusions should be judged on how much freedom, dignity and hope they afford. I prefer the word constructs to illusions because I think a real debate could be made on what is real (I’m not certain meaningless chaos is the only one sure reality), and why constructs, even if we create them, become real etc, but the underlying insight in his book is incredibly thought provoking. I’m unnerved by the idea that literally everything in my life that gives me stability is an illusion. But I’m comforted to know that even if that is true, a key to happiness is leaning into healthy illusions and/or engaging with the possibility of entropy, but processing it through artistic expression to help you cope with it and put your human meaning-making touch on it. Anyway, I LOVE sociology which is why I chose it as my minor in college and the book really got my wheels spinning. I also do personally believe in God (based on specific occurrences in my life I take as evidence that I feel can be explained in no other way), but even if their is a God, I believe They are so mysterious that They can only be understood in metaphor and illusion, so most of Becker’s theories would still hold, with the exception that with a loving God in place, hope would be there without us needing to create it. But either way we can create hope through illusion and artistic expression (to process the reality of absurdity when we do dive into it), and thus live happy lives.
In Yakima, we ate breakfast. While waiting for the food, I interviewed the kids about their reaction to the snow storm as well as their favorite part of the trip.
Lily drove 9 hours and then I took the wheel and got us home. We got in around 11:00. On the drive home, Lydia spent almost an hour entertaining her siblings. It was such a delight to listen to. Here is a sound recording: