The Labyrinth

Gabriel García Márquez wrote a historical novel entitled The General in his Labyrinth, a book about Simón Bolívar. In this book, Bolívar's last words are "Damn it. How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"
           Anyone who has read Looking For Alaska by John Green knows this. The labyrinth becomes a huge part of the story, particularly between Miles and Alaska. If you haven't read it, you should. It's pure genius.

 When I described this book to one of my friends (Emma, I think) and told her how it had last words of poets, playwrights and other famous people, literary references all over the places, a quote from Marx, but also sex references and being bold, and then Alaska, the larger-than-life, poetic, crazy, beautiful, sexy, unstoppable character, Emma concluded that it sound exactly like my perfect book.

She was right, of course. Sometimes, Alaska reminded me of myself, except she was more than me in many  ways. For one, she's curvier, but let's not talk about my ten-year-old-boy body. Alaska's more sure of herself than I am. She lives her own life, and when she wants other people, she has them, and she radiates such certainty and confidence. She also smokes, drinks and has a lot of sex, but that's irrelevant. (She's also better at maths)
 I've always had crushes on characters from books, but none so much as Alaska, but even that's not why I love her character so much.

What is the labyrinth? Is it the labyrinth of life, or death? What was Bolívar trying to escape? Alaska decides it's neither life nor death, but suffering. To an extent, I agree with her. But it got me thinking.

A labyrinth, as defined by the Oxford online dictionary is ;
A complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way; a maze.
                               (ie.) You lose yourself in a labyrinth of little streets.
      An intricate or confusing arrangement.

Do we all have our own personal labyrinth? Maybe it is suffering, or maybe it's life, or death. Death, in my opinion, is not a labyrinth, at least not for me. Death is the end, when there's nothing left to be scared of. Life and suffering often go hand in hand, but that being said, life and happiness and go hand in hand, and suffering and happiness can go hand in hand, like yin and yang.

The more one thinks about the labyrinth, the more finding out what the labyrinth is can become a labyrinth itself. "You lose yourself in a labyrinth of little streets." An example from a dictionary, that was meant to do nothing more than define a word in the literal sense, but it's strangely perfect for what I'm trying to say. The "little streets"- the many aspects of life, of a person, of anything that could make up the labyrinth. One street can lead on to another, and this could lead to another, and one street could have many different turn offs, and you can't possibly take all the streets, unless you keep going back, but there's always more streets ahead, and more behind than you realised, but going back can never take you forward.

But is forward the ultimate goal? In the book, the Colonel, a friend, decides that "The labyrinth blows, but I choose it." Would you rather wonder the streets of the labyrinth forever, not going forward or back but merely following any path that goes anywhere, not caring if a turn will double back to a street you've already been to? But I digress- how could we wonder the streets of the labyrinth if we can't decide what it is?

"Difficult to find one's way" is the key. Obviously- if it wasn't difficult, it wouldn't be a labyrinth. 

Perphaps the labyrinth is life. Or maybe there isn't just one labyrinth. Maybe everyone has multiple laybrinths that just add up and become one huge labyrinth, a tangled mass of intrlocking streets that nobody knows what to do with.

When I first thought about it, I came to the vauge idea that the labyrinth was myself, that what I was looking for was the way out of the tangled mass in my head, to emerge clear and certain on the other side and to know, finally, everything I am. I'm pretty sure this wasn't Bolívar's labyrinth, but everything is relative to the reader.

I haven't yet wrote myself out of the labyrinth. Maybe I never will, but imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, and I don't want to spend my whole life, my time in the labyrinth, imagining what it on the other side. I have to strive for my future, but my future isn't my life. Life isn't a journey, because if it was, it's got a pretty crap destination- death. Living in every second is what counts, and if you finally do get out of the labyrinth, don't ever forget how you got there, because the destination does not matter, perphaps the labyrinth doesn't even matter. So far, the labyrinth is a labyrinth itself, and maybe we're all fighting to get out of it, but when you get out- what's left to fight for?

Cíara, xox