“Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.”
I know.... Posting twice in one day is just setting everyone up for missed expectations later on. So don't get your hopes up, I'm bound to dash them against the rocks at a later date. But I couldn't let today pass without a celebration of something brilliant. The Phantom Tollbooth. I learned today that this brilliant piece of children's literature by Norton Juster is currently celebrating 50 years in print. An achievement by any standard.
But this no random achievement. It is the wide wake of a work of uncommon brilliance that is so rarely seen in our day or any other. For those who don’t know it, the Phantom Tollbooth tells the story of a boy, overcome by boredom and overstimulation and incapable of calculating the immeasurable wonder and wisdom of the world that surrounds him. He is the kind of boy that we have tried to bury in apps and electric guitars and Xboxes in our day, but is all as common now as he was 50 years ago.
In his search for meaning he is whisked away to a land that has lost its meaning as well, trapped between the feuding brothers, King Azaz, lord of Dictionopolis, and his brother the Mathemagician, ruler of Digitopolis. Milo’s guide through this strange world is a watchdog named Tock whose goal is to help Milo know what to do in the face of too much time. Legend has it that the world was once brought to peace and prosperity by twin sisters: Pure Rhyme and Sweet Reason, who have now been banished to a place so mysterious that the skies clap in thunder at the sound of its name: The Castle in the Air.
But this story is more than just the traversal of a bored little boy through a magical land of wondrous creatures. It is the story of what goes wrong in all our worlds when we lose the plot, what happens when we undermine our pursuit of meaning, what succumbs us when we are overcome by the next step and the step after that.
In the end, though I won’t betray the details, Milo learns that his life is rich with meaning and significance. Not in the foolish 21st century way where everyone is special just because they woke out of bed in the morning. No, Milo’s meaning comes from that old wisdom of consuming the marrow of learning, growth and understanding out of every misstep, every moment. It is the realization that one’s way is found not in the light of perfected optimism or carefully manicured safety, but in the risky pursuit of difference-making, mistake-making and a world where the two can, if handled correctly, be one in the same.
If you’ve never read it, shame on you and begin today.
If you haven’t read it in years, do what I’m doing and pick it up afresh.
And most importantly read it to your children. In a world of Twilights and Hunger Games, it may just teach them something more than the importance of their own feelings, their own hungers.
Our world, much like Milo’s, has banished Rhyme and Reason to a distant mythical place, it is perhaps in the sage wisdom of Norton Juster and others like him that we could release them from their occupation and Rhyme and Reason might reign once more.
“And remember, also," added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, "that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.”
ea sports
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