Growing up, Friday nights were for snuggling down into sleeping bags next to my cousins to watch The Princess Bride. We would swoon over farmboy-turned-pirate Wesley with his sweeping blond hair, hide beneath the covers every time the Rodent of Unusual Size emerged from the fire swamp, and chant “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” through the final fight scene.
What I would have given to be Princess Buttercup…
As I grew older, I realized life is much different than fairy tales, yet I still found myself wanting to create heroes and villains within my own personal narrative. I wanted to separate people into their good-versus-evil boxes and keep them there. I thought that, surely, the world would be more palatable if good always triumphed and evil got what was coming to them.
But human people are not that simple, are they?
I recently read a book that talked about the “complexities and contradictions” we carry as people, and that phrase stuck with me.1 Not only do I love a little alliteration, but also, the idea that all of us hold a unique web of intricacies and sometimes competing characteristics rang true. How very unfairytale-like we can be.
Each of us is a unique amalgamation of complexities and contradictions.
No person is completely one thing. All good. All bad. No person is a caricature of their best or worst qualities. Rather, each of us have a million little layers that are less like an onion and more like a skein of yarn—all wrapped up and prone to tangling.
But that’s hard to remember in the day to day, when fellow parents cut you off in the school pickup line or the boss plops a pile of work on your desk at 4 p.m. on a Friday. How desperately we want to wield our virtuous swords or charge the castle.
What keeps me tender when I want to place people in us-versus-them boxes is to look inward and own the complexities and contradictions within myself. I remember how I am:
a mother who still needs her mom
an introvert who often gets lonely
a big feeler who grows suspicious of emotional experiences
a listener uncomfortable with silence
a rule-follower who resists rigidity
an adult who cannot figure out how to keep a clean house
And then I remind myself: If I can be all these things—complex and contradicting as they appear—then so can you.
One of my favorite characters in The Princess Bride is Miracle Max, who lives with this wife Hillary on the outskirts of the Thieves Forest. Once fired by the “king’s stinking son,” Max is a wounded healer who exhibits a measure of compassion, but he is also (self-admittedly) not prone to summoning pro bono miracles or above rooting through the pockets of patients who don’t quite make it. He desires a noble cause, but is not without his faults.
As much as I want to be Buttercup, I am coming to terms with the idea that I am a little more like Max. Not the hero. Not the villain. Just a person doing my best to make a way in the world. To find healing. To love my people. To put food on the table. To resist evil and lean toward hope in the best way I can.
grace + peace,
Sarah
A question for contemplation and conversation as we consider how to be a little more human together:
What are some of the complexities and contradictions you carry?
Geoffrey L. Cohen, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides (United States: W. W. Norton, 2022).
🥴 this is all I got this Monday morn.
I consider myself an extrovert, but my main hobbies are all introverted hobbies!!!