Delivered on the occasion of my daughter’s high school graduation:
Graduating class of 2024, friends and family, I am going to risk committing the spoiler of the century. In my defense, the movie I’m about to give away is twenty five years old, so if by some miracle (or tragedy, depending) you don’t know how The Sixth Sense ends, it’s kind of your bad.
In terms of unexpected and dramatic plot twists, M. Night Shyamalan’s debut film marks a kind of before and after in storytelling.
The movie opens with main character Malcom Crowe (played by Bruce Willis) surviving an attack from one of his former psych patients, and the remainder of the film deals with the fallout of this tragedy as Dr. Crowe grapples with workaholism, a marriage gone cold, the literally haunting memories of his failure to help his former patient, and his present efforts to treat a new patient, a child with similar afflictions.
Viewers are led to believe that the conflict centers around this young boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, and whether or not Dr. Crowe will be able to rid him of his terrifyingly realistic hallucinations wherein he sees dead people. It’s a convincing and riveting storyline, but it’s not the real story.
The real story (here comes the spoiler) is that Dr. Crowe did not in fact survive the attack; he is one of the dead people that his young patient can see. This realization dawns on the audience and Dr. Crowe at the same moment, recapitulating every prior scene in the film to reflect a different reality than initially assumed. Awakening to the awareness that his condition is not living, but dead, allows Dr. Crowe to find peace and closure, despite the tragedy and loss of dying.
Now class, I’m not here to tell you that you’re dead and don’t know it. At least, not exactly.
I am here to tell you — and hopefully this isn’t news to you — that your life is a story. It may surprise you to learn, however, that you are not the author of your stories, despite the many cards you will doubtless receive tonight bearing trendy, hand-lettered assertions to the contrary.
British writer Paul Kingsnorth proposes that, “All day, every day, we use narratives to try and make sense of the ongoing confusion of reality; of the business of being human.” This relationship between confusion, narrative, and sense-making requires us to acknowledge that, yes, life is a story, but if we are honest about the limitations of our creative powers, the business of being human drives us to the hope — the certainty — that our story is being written someone much more creative, wise, and good than we.
And, showing absolute disregard for the post-modern fashion of rejecting narratives, ending stories at cliffhangers with no resolution, or, committing the cardinal sin of using TIME TRAVEL to disorient audiences, this author is neither cruel nor lazy nor capricious.
Our hearts, created in his image, long for epic stories rich in ravishing imagery, heroic characters, insurmountable problems, and unexpected solutions.
In the story of your lives, you will be given all of this and more. The tale will be legend, and it will be glorious.
Yet it may rarely be marked by glory. In my experience with this particular author, I have learned that his idea of progress or success is just as often measured in mundane repetition (washing dishes and looking for matching socks, for example) as it is by unexpected plot twists (eureka breakthroughs, exotic travels, or falling in love). Nevertheless, every page, every day, alludes to the author and his exquisite craft, even if his intent is sometimes inscrutable.
You will triumph, and you will fail. You will take risks, and sometimes they will pay off. You will grow, and learn, and you will be surprised at what you are capable of. There will be romance, and there will be heartbreak. There will be joy, and there will be sorrow.
In each chapter of your life, these paradoxes will draw you further up and further in to the real story, the true story, and although it is replete with plot twists that would surprise even M. Night Shyamalan, it is not a tragedy. It is not a story where the main character is dead and doesn’t know it. In fact, it is just the opposite.
Of course, parents and teachers also fall prey to the temptation of cosmic plagiarism, the allure of casting ourselves as the authors of your life stories. On such auspicious occasions as graduations, we cling to the pen for a few more footnotes, adding last-minute revisions, advice, or inspiration; to encourage achievement, to inspire you to, in the words of Chris Farley’s unforgettable motivational speaker Matt Foley, “go out, and get the world by the tail, and wrap it around, and pull it down, and put it in your pocket!”
Brilliant rhetoric is well and good, and certainly has its place, yet it can carry an implication of the threat that Foley levels next, “You’re probably gonna find, as you go out there, that you’re not gonna amount to JACK SQUAT … and you’ll be living in a van down by the river!”
But even more to the point, these Hail Mary efforts to take control of — and credit for — another’s work in order to ensure a happy ending for all do not help you or us in our efforts to make sense of the ongoing confusion of reality.
Esteemed graduates, I’m going to let you in on three secrets.
First, we have established that in the story of your life, you are not the author. Also, though, you are not the protagonist. While your part is essential, and in the scope of your perspective and experience, it is central, the real story is about someone else’s identity, creativity, decisions, actions, and achievements.
Second, two parallel arcs are unfolding in the narrative of your lives. (And, if you’ll indulge me, here I’d like to borrow from our old friend, the Story Sequence Chart, to help us as it has countless times before, to notice, arrange, and interpret the features of our story, and to orient each element into its proper place.)
For those of you who are unfamiliar, imagine with me a pyramid, representing the rising and falling action of the plot. In your unique story sequence chart, you are following the upward trajectory of exposition. The action is building, rising toward a climactic peak, and I am certain that exciting character development, shocking plot twists, and glorious resolutions lie before you.
However, never lose sight of the fact that in the REAL story, running concurrent to your own, your location plots on the opposite side of the chart. In the real story, you do not find yourselves in the exposition stage — the stage where you are still uncovering questions and searching for answers.
No, in the real story, you are in the denouement.
The climax, the moment when the ultimate questions are answered — “Will God keep his promises? Does love conquer all? Is death swallowed up in victory?” — this moment has already come and these questions have been answered with a resounding, triumphant YES in the declarations, “It is finished” and “He is not here. He is risen!” You are living between the climax and the final resolution.
Which brings me to the third secret. We already know the ending. We don’t know exactly how or when it will come to us, but we can skip ahead and read the last chapter.
As opaque as this author can sometimes seem, he has actually told us exactly where he is taking us. When you interpret the events of your life in light of this final conclusion, you can read even the most difficult and tragic circumstances recapitulated in light of the deeper story. You can understand that even what looks like desolation — like ashes, like scorched earth, like death itself — is in fact the laboring pain of birth, and new life is not only coming, it is already here.
In Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense, what looked like life was actually death. In your story, what looks like death is actually life.
So, graduates, friends, fellow characters — may the story of your life bring you into intimate knowledge of both the true author and the real protagonist.
This author is not careless, erratic, or fickle; he is not going to pull a postmodern switcheroo on his audience, or end the episode in the middle of a cliffhanger just to make sure you keep watching. And, I promise you, he will NOT suddenly resort to time travel because he’s out of ideas.
Although he is no stranger to tragedy, he is not in the tragedy-writing business. His story is a comedy, the kind where everything comes right in the end in a resolution so surprising, yet so deliciously and laughably obvious, we will wonder how we didn’t see it coming.
This author has given us a protagonist who is kinder and more wild than Pa Ingalls, and more romantic and brave than Prince Philip; he is a hidden king whose majesty is disguised — not as a Ranger from the North, but as a carpenter from Nazareth.
As the rising action of your life story builds toward exciting peaks, when you are deep in the valleys of conflict, and when you are so stuck in the mundane middle that you want to wrest control of the pen just so something will happen, remember this: you are actually situated on the downhill slide, in the denouement, and you already know the answer to the most important question. (He is risen!).
So, ladies, as you venture out into the world, may the giver of all good gifts and the author of all great stories give you eyes to see.
Not the eyes of Haley Joel Osment to see the dead among the living, but the eyes of Mary Magdalene to see the living among the dead. May these heavenly eyes allow you to see that every detail of your story is enfolded and reconciled within God’s story, illuminating the breathtaking surprise of beauty for ashes, joy in mourning, and the resurrected life that is yours, right now, in Christ Jesus.
COMMENTS
7 responses to “The Real Story of Your Life”
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Beautifully written!
My sweet daughter in law has once again hit the ball out of the park with this one!!! Great work, Jenny Anne!!!
This feels holy! Jenny Anne brings it all back to what really matters. I was encouraged and uplifted to hear it in person and now so thankful that it is recorded in words. Congratulations graduates!
Brava! I wish I had been there. Bon Courage, graduates!
Amazing speech, my friend! It was a joy to share in this beautiful journey with you! Congrats to our graduates!!
Wow!
Such a timely and provocative speech! Needless to say, I am so very proud of you and Violet!