We
Are True Believers
I
always loved the name of this English course from the first moment that I heard
it. There is something innately calming and hopeful about “True Believers,”
some intangible feeling of empowerment and confidence, buffered by a true,
unyielding belief. Throughout this course we’ve read of Candide, an inherently
honest boy who trusts, loves, and believes shamelessly and without hesitation. The
text, to me, did not seem fully realistic but rather a theoretical
guide—through satire—of how to live an honorable life. I almost see Candide as
a concept; the concept of an open, unyielding, and kind-hearted boy.
We then read about Philip Marlowe. He is
the most practical, sharp-witted, and comprehending character I have read of in
literature. His mind is clear and sharp, and collects thoughts in the way a
storm drain collects rain—everything pours into it, and the largest, most
ponderous and insurmountable ideas brought in by the moisture are in the easy
view of anyone who cares to actually bend down and look. He embodies perfectly
what the well-dressed private detective ought to (page one, anybody?); he sees
the details and shows you how to think of each piece of the world, in relation
to one another, as indispensible, mysterious, and near to bursting with
meanings and implications. Perhaps we do need someone like Marlowe to spell it
out for us and ask the questions we never want to ask.
Prince Hal, Falstaff, and King Henry
finished off our year. As a maturing teenager, Prince Henry encounters an
all-too-realistic-sounding dilemma. He has to show people who he is. I’m not
sure that I’m qualified to comment on this, given that I’m not satisfied with
my current attempts to do the same thing, but even I know it is important to
have an identity (if you still have my picture I drew with Hal’s two faces,
this is the perfect time to pull it out!). But it’s hard. It’s hard to know who
you are—are you your father’s son, and therefore the Prince, or are you the youth
who dawdles his time away in the tavern with drunken friends? Are you a man who
is to devote his life to his people, or are you to indulge your desires
regardless of those who have sworn their irrevocable allegiance to you?
But a truer question comes only after these have been asked:
can you be both? Are you both? While
the text provides an inspiring hope that, to an extent, we can be both, it had
another significance to me as well. I took a piece of wisdom and curiosity from
every book we read—and this, here, is what I think True Believers is about.
This is a True Belief.
I believe that people are collages, just
as this world is a mosaic of dancing, shimmering, changing tiles. We have the
highest aspiration to be uncontrollably true-hearted like Candide, as precise
and wise as Marlowe, and as devoted to our created selves as Prince Henry.
However, we also find ourselves in sticky situations, we find ourselves
wondering why we did something (ex:
Marlowe, wondering if he had to shoot Canino), and we find ourselves digging
our heels in to keep friends and strangers alike from convincing us that the
person we have chosen to be is, perhaps, not right for us. I am still turning
and shuffling the mosaics, finding how they fit together and what each unique pattern
means—I may not stop.
When my parents and I went to the Vatican
years ago, we visited their world-renowned mosaics studio, and they gave me
eight colorful mosaics. No two are the same color, but they all stun me with
their beauty no matter what arrangement I place them in. Even when I line them
up and they are uneven and scattered, they are beautiful. And just think…
everyone else has some mosaics too. I truly believe it is beautiful. 
