No. 36: Something’s Missing
Looking for… That Thing
There’s something missing.
It’s a feeling I used to think was exclusive to me — that sensation that you weren’t made quite right, like a factory robot left without a key part that you don’t even know exists. So you move about your life with this vague uneasiness that you’re not quite complete, but you also don’t know what completeness is supposed to feel like.
It’s the feeling that you’re living life wrong, somehow. That you’re hemmed in. And that another version of you that would somehow be doing life better.
The older and wiser I get, though, I realize that I’m not the only robot questioning whether it was made properly. A whole lot of us move around wondering whether something’s missing.
The thought came up this week watching Presumed Innocent, the adaptation of the 1987 Scott Turow novel, now a 8-part limited series on Apple TV+. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, it’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time, not surprising considering the novel was one of my favorites growing up. (My mom was horrified when she caught me reading it at 12.) But the story itself concerns a 40-something lawyer, with a beautiful wife, two kids, lots of money, fulfilling job, and what resembles a perfectly blissful life — who blows it all up by having a tempestuous, volatile affair with a work colleague who is then found savagely murdered. Naturally the lawyer is the prime suspect.
I think I’ve always loved the story of Presumed Innocent, because it gets at the heart of that missing thing that drives not only all the best main characters in stories, but also us, the main characters in our own lives. That urge to blow things up — in his case, a completely feckless, adolescent affair, but it could easily be quitting a job or buzzing off your hair or signing up for trapeze lessons or moving to New Zealand — all of which are usually done in the search of something nameless which is never found.
Yogis call this the need to expand, the sense that humans intrinsically despise boundaries and will always seek to transcend them because the energy that makes us up is boundless in itself. Which is why art is so compelling, because we can vicariously live through a thousand different characters all hitting this stumbling block of their own boundaries and trying everything they can to expand them before ending up right back where they started.
Now I’m thinking of cows, too. Because my partner has a hundred of them on this farm in Missouri and they too have their own allergy to boundaries. I remember a morning where my partner had just rotated them to brand new pasture, rich, lushly green, where they’d spend the next few weeks eating to their heart’s content. But the moment I passed the herd on my morning walk, they all started following me, big-eyed and grunting, like they had somewhere better to go. As my partner later explained, they thought I was leading them to new ground. “But you just moved them!” I said. He shook his head: “That’s just the way they are. Never happy.”
Okay, hold on. Never Happy and Something’s Missing are not the same thing. But… they’re eerily close. And it’s true that I, perhaps more than most, am relentless in my quest for more life and bigger heights and an assurance both from myself and universe that I have drained every last drop out of this existence… But I also think there is joy to be found in this quest for expansion instead of misery.
That is, if you realize the quest is futile and will not end in victory. Because then, like the cow following me to non-existent new ground, at some point, you realize this is a boondoggle to nowhere and you turn back and enjoy your pasture, without fear you’re missing out.
Instead of Something’s Missing, the mantra becomes: This is It. This is life, and that niggling feeling that there’s more to be had is part of that life and instead of blowing up your life to chase a phantom, there’s much more joy in savoring the feeling that you will always want to be bigger, freer, more evanescent than you can really ever be.
Maybe that’s why I write for young people — because it’s where the desire for more and more life hits boundaries so hard they might as well be penned in by electric fence.
I think this feeling is what’s at the heart of YOUNG WORLD, aka New Novel, which tracks a 17 year-old boy, who just feels like something’s missing in his own life. Not just in his own life. But every kid’s life. And it’s that feeling of incompleteness, that something’s wrong that drives him to make the same decisions as the lawyer in Presumed Innocent, as those cows in fresh pasture — to expand beyond boundaries and chase the unknown.
One more farm story that gets at the heart of things.
We have two mini-donkeys, named Buster and Gloria.
The reason we have two is because when I met my partner, he had only Gloria, and she spent all her days hanging out with the goats or following my partner around, and it was very, very clear she was depressed and lonely. “That’s just the way she is. She’s happy,” my partner grouched. “She’s Sylvia Plath!” I rebutted and bothered him until he bought a male mini-donkey to keep her company.
This did not go well.
Buster came to the farm and after being unloaded and put in a pen with Gloria, promptly tried to kill her. She responded by kicking him in the face, after which they chased each other around the pen, bleating at such volumes the cows in distant field moved as far as possible.
“What do we do?” I peeped, quite embarrassed that I was responsible for this situation.
He calmly walked back towards the house. “We let them figure it out.”
The next morning, we woke up, expecting to find a murder-suicide, and instead found two mini-donkeys necking and cuddling.
Buster and Gloria have been inseparable ever since. In 18 months, we’ve never once seen them apart.
And yet… Something’s Missing. Even for the most in-love pair I’ve ever seen in my life.
Because once a month, on a day of their choosing, Buster and Gloria try to escape the farm.
They literally have access to 100 acres of pasture and woods and all the freedom in the world. Endless food, water, safety. And still… they want to blow it up! Sometimes they hop a fence and go joyriding around the lake. More often, we’ll wake up on a weekend and see the two dusty bandits tiptoeing past our bedroom window, turning up the lane towards the highway. (And they literally tiptoe skulk, like they know we can see.)
My partner puts up with this for a few minutes, before he finally puts his shoes on, tramps outside and barks “HEY.”
The donkeys turn in synch, give him a grumpy look, and do the walk of shame back to their pasture.
“Where is it they think they’re going?” I always ask.
“Somewhere else,” he says.
And perhaps in that single exchange, that one question and answer, is all anyone ever needs to know about life.
Your turn: have you ever felt like something’s missing?
Until next week —
I wonder if this is the real dividing line between character types? Characters who want to blow things up and their security friend trying to stop them from doing so.
As a high schooler, I'm always working toward my dreams for the future, but sometimes I feel like I'm not fully living in the present and "missing something." The other day, I read Fall of the School For Good and Evil and was hit with a wave of nostalgia — I miss the times when I could just sit and read without having to worry about anything, to get lost in a world so unlike my own. Honestly, I was praying to be kidnapped by the School Master 🙏 thank you for making that world so real to me five years ago, and I can't wait for Young Worlds!!