#problemofpain

I have been thinking for a long time, essentially since I have arrived here, that I need to change this blog’s name. I, after all, am no longer “Budapest Bound,” No, I am definitely Budapest...arrived? Lived? Here? Anyway, I have been in Budapest for quite some time now (9 months!?) and for as much as don’t want to give up the bad (fun) alliteration, I think the time has come. No, the time is long overdue.

 Inspiration for the new name is, of course, not my own. It is a borrowed idea from C.S. Lewis’ Problem of Pain (after all, he is the patron saint of all protestants), from a comment on the tragic, rebellious flaw of human nature, and one that I, too, act out.

Lewis writes the story of this flaw poetically, saying:

“We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods…. They wanted some corner in this universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives.”

The thought of being an adjective, a description, is at first unappealing to me. It is definitely a step down. After all, according to the rules of language humans are nouns. There is little way around this. But I think Lewis’ intuition reaches toward something that I too, also sense; it reaches into something in my nature and in the nature of my friends and in the nature of my enemies too.

The Biblical story tells that all humans are made in the image of God, and in this way they are reflections of him. It tells, essentially, that every person is a creation that shares a likeness to the Artist who created them. It also tells that it is in this form that the creation is at its very best, at its most perfect— when it reflects the Artist most clearly, when it is an adjective.

Following this idea, if the creation were to see the beauty and power and control of not existing as a description, but being, and decided try to deny it’s nature as an adjective, it would need to reject the parts of it that bear the image of the Artist, and perhaps it would have to go so far as to claim those parts as its own first and foremost.  It would answer to and reflect only itself. It would become in the most serious and lonely sense, a noun. This is what the Biblical narrative suggests did happen, it is why the world looks as it does now, for humans, and particularly humans today, see themselves as collections of individualized nouns.

Really, sometimes the world (and at least my life) really does seem to make sense this way.

But the “what if” prompts me further. If, just if, we are indeed adjectives that have tried to become nouns, then the truth is that we only are weak versions of what we could be. An adjective describing the most beautiful, powerful, good noun is infinitely more powerful and beautiful and good than even the most powerful or beautiful or good adjective that is describing and pointing only back to itself.

As a 20-something recent college grad and millennial, I am naturally going through a process of self-discovery.  As I am moving through this, the world around me (and my generation in particular) never seems to stop talking about how I need to be the most strong, concentrated version of myself I can. It is true, it is part of being human in this cultural context.

But it seems to me that maybe this is achieved through being merely an adjective describing something greater than just me. If I really am just an adjective, I am the most concentrated and strong version of myself... I am most myself when I act like an adjective, much more than when I fight to define myself as a noun.