A group of engineers from MIT were asked to design a windshield for airplanes that could withstand the impact of geese crashing into it. When they finally invented what they thought was the right kind of glass, they had to devise a realistic method for testing it. So they came up with the plan of installing the new windshield on a train and then shooting a dead turkey, the kind you get at a supermarket, onto the moving train through a bazooka-like device. The speed of the moving train and the speed and weight of the turkey reproduced perfectly the impact of a goose on a flying airplane’s windshield. The experiment was so successful that a group of engineers, this time from Harvard, sought to reproduce it. This time, however, the windshield shattered and the rushing turkey almost decapitated the train’s driver. When the MIT engineers heard of this, they asked the Harvard engineers to describe exactly what they had done. After reading the description of the Harvard experiment, the MIT engineers sent back a single sentence message: “Defrost the turkey!”
Improbable as it seems, my friend’s e-mail got me thinking about why I write young-adult books. What if our world is such that at an early age we begin to shield ourselves from its pain and even its beauty by erecting impenetrable windshields? What if what really matters in our lives, the gladness in our heart and the world’s great need, can only be found in that pain and in that beauty, which our self-created shields now prevent us from fully perceiving? Wouldn’t one of the world’s deep needs be to create something that shatters the windshield of the banal, of all those values and worldly ambitions that keep us from experiencing the wonder of being unique and alive and burdened with purpose? And if so, how do you break through the barrier that protects us but also slowly smothers our heart’s breath? Maybe art can do that. Before the windshield fully hardens, at an age when our capacity to feel is heightened, before the numbing fully sets in, a book can break through and plant the questions that will burn and unsettle until they are answered, or at least attended to. Who am I? What am I supposed to do in this life? What matters?
How does art do that? How does it awaken us? For me it seems, the creation of that art involves tapping into the raw materials of my life, the losses and the joys, taking all that and “frosting” it with carefully and patiently constructed craft so that the end product has my flesh and blood, but it is also something more than me. It is art now, a mixture of my experience and of invention, of reality and imagination, of truth and beauty. […]
Is there such a thing as making a mistake in life? Absolutely. People take the wrong jobs for the wrong reason, they squander their talents, they live lives of quiet desperation never realizing who they truly are. But mistakes can be redeemed if we are willing. The wrong turn can take you to the right door, but then you have to open it and step in. I’m beginning to think that there’s no such thing as a wasted life. In ways that I am only barely beginning to fathom, every wrong decision is salvaged and used. The work of art that is our life is constantly shifting, adapting and changing to incorporate our mistakes and in the end what seemed wrong will be right, an indispensable part of the whole.
On the train ride home from my legal job and after I finish writing for the day, I say the same prayer [as in the morning], silently. “My Jesus, I offer you my work today, poor as it is. I know you will put it to good use.”