Life of Phi
When I was given a copy of Life of Pi at my high school graduation (my high school was an Episcopal boarding school), I read the first five pages. Then, I put the book down, and I think I said a very audible "No." out loud to no one in particular, but mostly myself. No, I would not read the book to "believe in God."
Now, I'm not an atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist, or anything for that matter. I am spiritual though, but I think I find my way to some sort of higher power or spirit my own way. So, why was I so adamant about not reading Life of Pi? I think to get to the bottom of that I need to give an analysis of Life of Pi the movie.
Movie
I still don't know if I will read Life of Pi, but last weekend I thought I would finally give the movie a try after not watching in the movie theatre. I mean, it got an award. As an avid movie watcher, maybe I could at least appreciate the cinematography, right? With a new sense of determination to make it through the story, I fired up my iPad and tapped play.
Pi is a deeply curious character, who explores and ends up following multiple religions while growing up. Suddenly, his family is uprooted from India, and they set out on a journey east to the U.S. with all of their zoo animals. The giant ship they are on goes through a terrible storm near the Mariana Trench, and ultimately Pi is the only survivor. From there, the story continues through a very fantastical journey across the Pacific Ocean with larger than life characters (an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a tiger). Through a sequence of events, the zebra, orangutan, and hyena all meet their end. Pi and the tiger go through several trials and tribulations, and see fantastical things along the way (e.g. a carnivorous algae island). In the end, Pi and the tiger make it to Mexico barely alive.
However, as word of Pi's survival reaches the Japanese shipping company, they send representatives to find out why their ship sank, and how Pi was the only survivor. At first, they don't believe the fantastical story about the tiger that Pi tells, as entertaining as it might be. They want the truth, so Pi constructs a story with humans and their very human behaviors (spoiler: instead of animals killing each other on the lifeboat, it's humans): very boring, and also difficult to internalize.
Fantastical
Why is it difficult to internalize real human behavior, especially sins? We have parables, ancient Greek stories, and other stories passed down over the ages to relate lessons about the human condition in relatable, but especially congestible, bite-sized increments.
We need the fantastical. We crave the stories. We want to believe the stories we have written about Jesus and other prophets, or what-have-you. As a species, it's difficult for us to accept the truth a lot of times, so we make it into something we can believe. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I think there are plenty of people who choose not to leave their faith in the hands of pure belief.
Believe
What do I choose to believe? I crave the truth. I am a very curious person. I want to know how something works, or why you believe what you do. I always ask "why?" sometimes (okay, maybe always) to the annoyance of others.
That isn't to say that I don't enjoy a great story every once in a while. I love movies after all, and is there a better medium to bring words off a page to create something fantastical? Arguably, no, but I choose not to live my life based on stories. I'd rather look to real examples as my heroes. That means accepting people with their flaws as much as their triumphs. We're all human, we all make mistakes, we all have the capacity to inspire, and we'll always have the capacity to love one another.
Phi
And if you're like me, you can look into nature to see how small we really are, but also look for inspiration there. How fantastical, yet so very real, does nature seem? Look at our mathematical interpretations of nature to get a mere glimpse. For example, phi is the golden ratio (personification of perfection, if I ever saw it), which shows up in many things.