Rediscovering Wonder in our Inside-Out World
What Has Died For The Sake Of Joy?
I once watched a movie where all the main characters lived inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl. These characters were her personified emotions: Sadness, Anger, Joy, and others. In one scene, the protagonist Joy, finds herself trapped in a dark valley of forgotten memories known as "The Memory Dump," with an imaginary childhood friend named "Bing Bong." Bing Bong is this pink, fuzzy elephant sporting a purple bowtie and a raccoon's tail. Oh, and apparently he’s made of cotton candy.
Joy and Bing Bong begin working together to get out, finding an old red wagon and singing a magical song that transforms the wagon and the broomsticks attached to it into a space shuttle with rocket boosters. It's a miraculous event, defying the laws of physics. They sing and sing, propelling the wagon higher and higher, but they don’t rise high enough. The boosters sputter and they fall. Undeterred, they make another attempt, only to meet failure. Again, they try. Again, they fail. At this point, Bing Bong turns to Joy and utters, "Just one more time, I've got a good feeling about this one."
They reposition themselves in the wagon, Joy at the front and Bing Bong at the back, and they sing their magical song to fuel their magical rocket. "Louder!" urges Bing Bong. "You have to sing louder!"
In response, Joy’s voice erupts. Her imaginary friend, meanwhile, slides to the rear of the wagon and willingly tumbles off. Joy keeps singing, and sure enough, escapes The Memory Dump. She lands with exhilaration and only then looks back and down into the abyss. Her friend Bing Bong smiles up at her. And slowly, like in an old dream, he begins to fade away. He disappears into the dark valley like grains of sand dropped in the wind.
Perhaps the movie-makers were simply saying that as children grow up they no longer have imaginary friends. But to me, this scene represents something more.
What if there was something in our childhood that was never supposed to be forgotten? Something children get that grownups don’t? What if our modern age teaches a lesser joy — a life riddled with anxiety, despair, and restlessness — and we are taught, trained, and tricked into complicity with it?
In the story above, it's depicted as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good. The movie (called “Inside Out,” in case you were wondering) seems to suggest that to attain happiness and joy one must leave their imagination behind.
This push away from the unexplainable other, whether it may be a force, a god, or an imaginary friend, signifies a shift toward so-called “adult thinking” today. It’s an Inside-Out way of living, belittling any external or eternal realities for the sake of believing in yourself. The supreme value is inward feelings. But as I’ll argue below, this Inside-Out approach isn’t good for our feelings.
In our culture, to “grow up” is to suppress wonder, amazement, and the sense of adventure that Bing Bong represents. We now live in a time focused on how and what instead of why and who. We're educated about how things work and what they are made of, but discussions of why we exist and who we exist for are largely absent. This suppression is prevalent, placating us within a flat, dull, and immanent frame.
Let me clarify; I'm not suggesting adults should invent imaginary friends made of cotton candy. Instead, we should, despite any and all opposition, believe in magic, miracles, angels and demons, the virgin birth, the forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting. The Christian story is one of true magic, with God as the true magician. In God's narrative, broomsticks really can become rocket boosters. Or in the words of Jesus, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move.”
But just like the magic in Narnia, we mustn’t misuse it. In fact, any attempt to control it disgraces what’s behind it. That’s one of the reasons why the death of Bing Bong is so sad: he was unpredictable, incomprehensible, and uncontrollable. The human heart craves this unexplainable other to act upon them. It’s why we travel and watch movies and scroll and scroll for so long; we want to escape this world because we have this nagging sense that something must be beyond it.
Life in the here-and-now is utterly predictable. There will be an uncomfortable conversation with a relative next week. And bad weather. Laundry. A hard day at work. Drinks with a friend. Traffic. A ranting uncle on Facebook. A school shooting. A funny joke. A sore back. More laundry.
Sadness will keep on being sad. Anger will be angry. Joy will be joy. Dopamine will be released. Hormones will fluctuate. Endorphine highs will be followed by depressive lows. It is the way of life in the what and how world.
Daily news is so predictable that AI is starting to write it. Our brains are so predictable that higher-education psychologists, sociologists, and biologists explain it with ease. There is nothing random, they say. Nothing unpredictable.
The stars are just big balls of gas burning billions of miles away, according to Pumba in The Lion King. He was laughed at for saying this. He should have been. It is utterly ridiculous to reduce the mind to chemicals, the stars to gas, and the universe to whats and hows.
Charles Taylor predicted, back in 2007, that future young people will begin again to explore beyond the boundaries of Inside Out living, the immanent frame, and the disenchanted flattened world. But what if they don’t? What if they just… live with a lesser joy?
A friend of mine has noticed an increasing openness to the new age, the occult, and psychedelics. But none of these others are mainstream. The mainstream tells us to avoid longing for something more than what the Inside-Out way offers. We should suck it up, hold it together, and, if nothing else, for the sake of the economy, do our part in making the whole thing continue. But the whole thing shouldn’t. The whole thing isn’t working. It never has. It never will.
Our Inside-Out way of living teaches believe in yourself, follow your heart, be true to self, express who you are, and so on. Inside-Out living is inevitably anxious because it constantly renegotiates its own terms; am I really as much of an introvert as I think I am? Would watching this make me happy? Is my job as fulfilling as the next one might be? Do I actually like Samantha? Will I be happy with that many kids? What if I change my mind?
We all desire a friend who invites us on a magical adventure and calls on us to sing. We’ve been told this is only imaginary. It’s make-believe. It is an evolutionary response in order to ensure our species survived. But this how and what explanation reduces wonder to a product of chance without any inherent beauty, as if the Mona Lisa is no different than spilled paint.
What Christianity offers is an encounter with a supernatural person who calls you into his story and takes you on his adventure. It is magical. What Christianity offers is not an escape from this world but an enchantment of it, providing the why and who answers to the questions too many adults have stopped asking.
I have more to say on this in the coming weeks. For now, let me conclude:
The World Is Inside-Out.
Christianity Is Outside-In.
For the joy set out for him Jesus endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrew 12:2