Connor Campbell, Period 2, 3/24/21, Day A

Connor Campbell

Modern Mythology

Ms. Fusaro

3/24/2021

    My blog couldn’t have come at a more perfect time than right now. As I’m writing this, my mythology class is reading John Gardner’s Grendel. Each year, one text would be the stand-out text that I’ll never forget. Sophomore year it was Slaughterhouse Five, junior year it was The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and this year it’s Grendel. I’m only on chapter 8 and I’ve already built an incredible connection to the novel, its lessons, and the title character himself. The narration and character of Grendel are fascinatingly entertaining. His snarky and sometimes poetic remarks replicate sentiments often heard by modern teenagers, despite the novel being released 50 years ago. Each chapter describes a new journey with new interesting characters, influencing me to reflect on my own life and how I’ve seen parallels in my own upbringing (at a much smaller scale of course). In short, this fifty-year-old novel contains the perfect blend of entertainment, relatability, and enlightenment; making it, in my opinion, the best read of the year. 

    Other than a specific novel, the other memory of each years’ English class that travels with me is an overall theme. Last year it was the importance of small decisions, every action you make or word you speak could have a monumental impact on your life and the life of those around you. This year, the theme is fate. More specifically, the question of “if your life is already preplanned, how should you live?” There have been two philosophies that stood out to me the most. In Norse culture, the gods spend all their efforts preparing for Ragnarok, even though they know they’re destined to lose. It seemed like a waste of time to me, why couldn’t they use their time more beneficially for the betterment of post-Ragnarok civilization? The other side is the side the Dragon took in Grendel. The most profound word we use in our analysis of Grendel is Nihilism, the philosophy that nothing in the world matters. The Dragon doesn’t want to do anything other than sit on a mountain of gold because, ultimately, he can’t change the track of his, or anyone’s, life. That track had already been decided. I was critical of the Dragon’s philosophy, too. I thought it was lazy. Safe to say, I didn’t enjoy either ideal, so I began reflecting. If I already knew the end result of my life, how would I live it? The question stumped me for a while. I don’t even know how to fully live my life now so how could I possibly know how to live my life in an alternate universe? I sat on the question, hoping to find inspiration in due time.

    Then I watched this short film on the YouTube channel Omeleto (I highly recommend checking out their content and subscribing) called “Exit Strategy.” If you plan on watching it, I’ll put an asterisk at the beginning and the end of the spoilers because it’s much more enjoyable to watch without knowing the end. Anyway, the film centers around a nerdy guy who discovers time travel and uses it to save his brother, a firefighter, from dying in a fire. *He’s done countless attempts to save his brother from dying in the fire, writing down every detail of every failed attempt and memorizing every significant detail of the day. He realizes if his brother goes into the fire, he’ll die. If he tries to steer his brother away from the fire, his brother will get called in as backup and die in the fire anyway. Finally, he cuts off all outside contact and successfully steers his brother away from the fire. The brother finds out about the fire and starts a fight with the protagonist for keeping him away. They get in a shoving match where the brother hits his head on a cut tree log and dies. At that moment, the protagonist realizes that he can’t help his brother escape death. He restarts the day one more time, but instead of trying to save his brother, he plans to enjoy the little time he has left because it’s the last time he’ll see his brother. He talks to his brother about his family and children, learning about them so he could fill his brother's shoes after the brother’s inevitable passing. It was heartbreaking, but touching, the best short film I’ve watched thus far.*

    More importantly, I had my answer. If my life was already planned out, I’ll live to be the best version of myself I can be. Fate can control our end results, but it can’t control who we are when we reach that result. Much like our protagonist, I use every failure or sorrow as an opportunity. *The protagonist decided to finally embrace his family side, something he avoided throughout his life.* It sounds cliche but failure is key to character building. Who you are isn’t determined by your success, but how you find success from failure. Most importantly, who you are is determined by how you can influence success for others as well as yourself. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve used a lot of free time to work on myself, but I’ve also used a lot of time to reach out to people and show them I care for them. I’m in a better place socially now than I was a year ago, despite seeing people at ⅛ of the frequency I once did. Instead of drowning in darkness, I’m swimming in light, something I didn’t originally expect at the dawn of the pandemic. Moral of the story, stay positive. Some things are just out of your control and it’s best to search for opportunity than stress over mistakes. Learn to find the light in yourself and then bring that same light out in others. Maybe fate is inevitable, we’ll never know. If it isn’t, you’re walking up a stairway to success; and if it is, at least you’re enjoying your life as much as you can, can’t ask for anything more than that.