WHOLES, Being my thoughts about Louis Sachar's HOLES

It all began with a dream.
Elya Yelnats fell in love with a beautiful young girl. 
He who hesitates is lost.
Elya Yelnats asked the girl's father for her hand in marriage.
Let's fight the war from here.
Elya Yelnats was told that she was already spoken for.  Her price?  A hog.
She would be a one-hog wife.
So, Elya Yelnats sought wisdom. 
When the student is ready the teacher will appear.
Elya was told by the gypsy Zeroni to carry a pig up the mountain where the water ran uphill, and while letting it drink sing it a song...

"If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs,

"The bark on the tree was just a little bit softer." 

While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,

He cries to the moo--oo--oon,

"If only, if only." 

But he must promise in the end to carry Madam Zeroni up the hill, let her drink, and sing her the song.  Otherwise, his family would be cursed forever. 

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Gypsy Zeroni tells him the solution to this riddle is to begin with a piglet and carry it up the mountain every day. 

This he did faithfully.

Faithfully.  Consistentley.  Without fail.  Thinking of the girl and his future happiness as he did so.

He delivered his pig on the appointed day.  His pig weighed the same as the other suitor's pig.  In the meantime, Elya had grown strong.  To his dismay, the girl of his dreams made no distinction between him (with his youth, his good looks, his ardour) and the middle-aged-overweight-unschooled competitor.

Sour grapes.

Elya left, leaving the pig as a wedding gift (making her a two-hog wife) and, alas,  forgetting the final part of his promise-- to carry Madam Zeroni up the hill--boarded a ship to the promised land.

Fast-forward a hundred years or so.  Elya has a son who he (palindromically) names Stanley -- S t a n l e y  y e l n a t S.  His son's son is Stanley the II.  His son's son's son is Stanly the III.  His son's son's son's son is Stanley IV.  By now Elya has become a family icon-- "the dirty rotten pig stealer".  Each generation in turn blames Elya for their bad luck.  All because Elya did not fulfill his promise to "carry the gypsy up the hill".

Stanley IV is an easy target for bullies at school.  He is overweight and without friends.  On the day of his arrest he had been delayed at school when his attempt to retrieve his stolen notebook ended up with his having to fish it out of the toilet--thus causing him to miss his bus.  He ended up walking home.  There he was minding his own business when a pair of shoes fell from an overpass into his path.  These shoes were odiferous and so he collected them to present to his father, whose avocation was to discover an elixir that would sweeten soles. 

The fateful shoes were to be the catalyst that would change the course of all their lives.

Stanley was found to be in possession of shoes that had been donated by a celebrity athlete to be auctioned to raise money for a homeless shelter.  Stanley was indicted, tried, and sentenced to a year at a Camp Green Lake--where his character would be built be daily digging a hole 5 feet wide and 5 feet deep.

Camp Green Lake, which we will find was indeed once a lake surrounded by a prosperous frontier community, was now desolate, remote, and (dare we say) cursed.  The camp's warden is bound by the golden handcuffs of hidden treasure a - a bequest handed down to her by her father, grandfather, and so forth to her progenitor who wreaked havoc upon all he knew through his pride, jealousy, and hate.

Coincidentally, a boy known as Zero is at the camp.  Zero is good at digging and maintaining a low profile.  He is also the one who stole the shoes that brought Stanley to the camp.  Zero offers to dig Stanley's holes in exchange for reading and writing lessons.

A series of events compells Zero to strike out on his own across the desert.  Stanley deliberates a day before deciding to do the right thing -- search for Zero and bring him back.

Charity never faileth.

Like Elya before him, Stanley is now strong and fit as a result of his consistent daily discipline.  Stanley finds Zero.  They orient themselves to a distant mountain that resembles "God's thumb".  Stanley wondered if this was the same sanctuary where the family story says that the first Stanley Yelnats found refuge after having been robbed and left for dead.  Stanley carries Zero up this mountain where they find a stream that runs up hill.  They drink and eat wild onions and Stanley sings the lullaby "If only, if only." 

As it turns out, Zero is a descendent of Madam Zeroni and Stanley's rescue of Zero has fulfilled his family's obligation.  As Zero and Stanley retrace their steps to Camp Green Lake Stanley trusts Zero's sense of direction and uncanny mathematical ability to set their course.  They end up finding the hidden treasure, which is in a trunk inscribed with the name Stanley Yelnats.

The story is circular, which completes one great whole.

Matthew 5: 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.


This scripture has always had the ring of the impossible to me.  That is until my daughter suggested to me that another interpretation of the scripture could be "Be ye therefore whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole."  She described for me a sphere, complete except for one sliver (like a three-dimensional puzzle).  The sliver is Jesus Christ.  The sphere is me.  I cannot be whole, or complete, without Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is one with The Father.  As I direct my life to be one with Jesus Christ, or more accurately, invite Jesus Christ into my daily life I move towards completeness, wholeness, perfection.

My daily thoughts and actions either invite or dismiss the gift of the Holy Ghost .

***

At what point did Elya's family blame everything on him?  Did he begin it himself?  Did he sigh, "If only, if only"?  Did it begin with his "dirty-rotten, pig-stealing" self?  Did his son blame every turn of misfortune on his father?  "It's all because of my dirty-rotten, pig-stealing father."  Did his grandson bemoan, "it's all because of my dirty-rotten, pig-stealing grandfather."?

Blame and complain.

Which begs the questions...



Where am I on this continuem?

Where do I want to be?

Where do I want my children to be?

And my children's children?  And my children's children's children?

The choices I make, the promises I make, the desires that direct my energies, the way I respond to conditions over which I have little or no control-- this is the script I write. 

This is my bequest.



Is there anything that I want enough to change my behavior to get?  Am I filling my "dream tank"?  How can I create enough desire to overcome the law of inertia? 

A body at rest tends to stay at rest.  A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

I have found that blaming and complaining gets me nowhere.  I have found, like Elya, that breaking a task down into smaller pieces allows me to chip away at my mountain of intentions and turn them into commitments.

Blame and complain are the shackles of servitude.  As long as a person, a people, a tribe, a culture, a nation is in "blame and complain" mode he, she, they will remain in bondage.

Each of us must carry the gypsy up the hill. 

Who, in my family, carried the gypsy up the hill?  Every one of my progenitors played a part in my having what I have, being who I am.  I am grateful to each of them.

Our family motto is "To the last generation".  When making choices, when shaping our lives, we ask, "How will this effect my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren"?  "What am I giving them permission to do if I do this?"  We know we do not exist in a vacuum.

Post Script...
My 21 year-old daughter, my husband, my 13-year old daughter, and myself recently found ourselves in an esoteric conversation about string theory and Einstein's theory of relativity and the concept of time.  We acturally have little knowledge of any of these and so were simply playing with "supposes".  We postulated that time is not linear like this: __________________ but may be linear like this: . (in other words you take the line and turn it so you're looking at it as if it is a tunnel.  In this way there is no dimension "time" -- all time exists at once.  My 21 year-old related a conversation she had while in high school with one of her friends.  He said that any choice we make not only effects the future, but also effects the past.  Choices which hurt the present also hurt the future and hurt the past.  I don't know how this could be, using my logical mind.  And yet, this is exactly the idea which Louis Sachar brilliantly explored in his book Holes.  This idea transitions Holes to Wholes.  Eternity is a Whole.  It is where all time is connected, all choices are connected, all consequences are connected, and all can be healed.  All can become whole.