A life without fiction?

How reading fiction is making me a better parent

A Portrait of a Mother and Her Two Sons, Hilda Fearon, 1911 (Wikimedia Commons)

I finally finished Joseph Epstein’s slim volume, The Novel, Who Needs It? In one of his last essays, he asks the question:

What would a world without fiction be like?

Horrible, is my short answer. Impoverished, unimaginative, completely bankrupt…

However, like Epstein, I acknowledge:

“Many—most—people perhaps wouldn’t notice any difference. But for that minority interested in the oddity of human character, in the role that fortune and fate play in human destiny, in the vast ans variousness and ricness of human possibility, in the contradictorienss of human nature, the absence of fiction would be a major subtraction and towering sadness.”

I’d like to make an addition to that list: for those who desire to love better and parent well, the lack of fiction in our lives would be a sorrowful and tragic thing.

Last weekend was the beginning of the college football season for my son who plays college ball. The game did not go well. It especially didn’t go well with him. This, after difficult season last year. And now he is facing a long, and quite likely, difficult season ahead. It is not an overstatement to say that despair is knocking at the door, seeping through the cracks, trying hard to leech its sick way in.

Over the years, I’ve left much of the pep talking and athlete advice to my husband. He was the college athlete after all, not me. What do I know of the pressures of college athletics? I’ve assumed more of the cheerleader role—when I haven’t, it’s not always well received.

This time felt different. Somehow, I sensed we were (still somewhat are) on the precipice of a decision-making cliff; one step in the wrong direction and all would be lost. And it wasn’t only my son on the precipice. I was standing at the edge as well. I had a decision to make. Do I stay silent? That didn’t seem like an option. But, what to say? How to engage this son in a way that helped him to see the truth about his purpose and his place in this season of life? How to move him in a direction of doing the deep and hard work of dismantling his pride, humbling himself to the process—the full process—of the work set before him, and let the work and the knowing he’s fully invested be enough, no matter the outcome.

And, here’s the tricky (impossible?) part: doing this in a way that puts him in the driver’s seat. So that it’s his discovery and conviction and motivation to turn and walk the other way, toward re-engagement in a purposeful and abundant way.

I may or may not have been shaking as I wrote my first letter-text to him (Yes. A letter-length text. It was the only form he’d likely see and read.)

And what did I lead with?

A series of questions posed by fiction author, Daniel Nayeri, in a talk he gave at Wheaton College last October.

You can watch his talk here:

“It’s not the storyteller’s job to offer up answers,” Nayeri begins. “So this talk is called the Best Questions I Ever Asked.” These are questions Nayeri has asked himself in navigating his own life, helping him to move ever toward his purpose.

Below are the ones I posed to my son:

1. What will I wish I knew a year from now? (I added one, two, three, and six months as well) Discerning the answer to this question gives actionable steps you can take now.

2. Nayeri’s high school football coach (in Oklahoma) taught his players that in football—and life—you can either win, or learn. In order to do one of these two things you must ask yourself every day: What position should I be playing today? Or, what role can I play here?

3. What’s the worst thing that can happen in this situation?

4. What’s the rarest thing I can learn here? If I’m not committing to learning it, then I’m just spinning time.

5. What’s my dreamland scenario? (the opposite side of the worst that can happen)

6. What task would you (boss, coach, teacher, loved one) like me to own?

7. What’s the most true thing you can think of?

8. What purpose do I serve?

These questions set off a series of continued text-letters and responses over the next several days; a slow feeding of things I’ve been reading: there is a cost to joy, and the cost is worth it, I promise you. And metaphors that seemed especially important for him to hear right now: You are a love letter of Christ to the world. You are his aroma to everyone around you (2 Corinthians 2-3). Don’t let your fears or pride mask His fragrance.

Then came his phone call and desire to get to the bottom of this thing. To confess his fears and admit his pride. It was a dam-break moment. He is taking actionable steps today. And I keep praying for his tomorrows.

I know what you’re thinking: But Shari. That wasn’t fiction that you first texted your son. It was Daniel Nayeri giving a speech.

Sure. But Daniel Nayeri was invited to give that speech because he writes fiction. So, at the least I am here to say we need fiction writers in our lives.

This fact alone proves the nature of fiction’s beautiful influence on us: it always comes to us through the back door. “Stealing past those watchful dragons,” as C. S. Lewis magnificently expressed it. (from his essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said”)

For, fiction writers see the world and humanity: our beauty and brokenness, abundances and severe impoverishment; and invite us into their seeing in such a way that allows us to take it in, consider it, rejoice, weep, confess, commiserate—to live inside it—and come out the other side more human, more whole. This is a gift. For it seems to me that to try and give us the world in any other way would destroy us.

And this is essentially how reading fiction has made me a better parent. By living alongside (sometimes it feels like inside) characters and having their lessons become my own. It’s Sima’s understanding of and surrendering to the cost of joy (Everything Sad is Untrue); Hannah’s steadfastness through heartache, peace and contentment in a life long and well lived (Hannah Coulter). Jewell’s devotion and commitment to finding the greater truth and the deeper love (Jewell).

It’s not only those admirable, heroic mothers that have been my guides. I’m indebted to the difficult and tragic ones, too: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Demon Copperhead, Diary of A Mad Housewife, The Awakening, Anna Karenina, are just a few that come to mind.

A favorite line in our household is: Practice makes permanent. Said another way is the more well known line: You become what you do.

I think the same holds true for reading: You become what you read.

Strangely, I have found it is the life of reading fiction, alongside the Scriptures (given to us essentially as Story; or as C. S. Lewis called it, the Myth that became Fact), that continually makes me a better version of myself.

For this, I am ever grateful for the gift of fiction in our lives (hopefully, someday my kids will be thankful for it, too).