Zero

"After Stanley taught Zero the last six letters of the alphabet, he taught him to write his name.
'Capital Z - e - r - o.'
Zero wrote the letters as Stanley said them. 'Zero,' he said, looking at his piece of paper. His smile was too big for his face.
Stanley watched him write it over and over again.
Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero ...
In a way, it made him sad. He couldn't help but think that a hundred times zero was still nothing."
-- from Holes by Louis Sachar

Zero is something of a mathematical oddity. In principle, it seems simple enough to understand. Zero means nothing; it's what you write when there isn't anything to count. But try working with zero, and you'll soon find that it doesn’t play by the rules. Add it to something, and it doesn't make the something bigger. Subtract it from something, and the something doesn’t get smaller. Multiply it by something, and it completely wipes the something out. And heaven forbid you try to divide something by zero. All sorts of chaotic things can happen.

Zero is neither positive nor negative. It’s neither prime nor composite. Raise anything to the zero power, and the answer is 1. But raise zero to any power, and the answer is 0. Except, of course, if you raise zero to the zero power. That’s undefined. If you append a zero onto a number, you increase the number by a factor of ten. Well, unless it’s after the decimal point; in that case, the number does not change. Oh, and 0! = 1, but only by convention.

The list goes on, but don’t worry. I can say it simply: Zero is a pain in the ass. My professional life is plagued by sticky situations involving zero, perhaps more so now that I work on elementary materials. I must confess that these are the sorts of things I thought about when I first read the quote above in my latest book. I spent fifteen minutes or so yesterday thinking about how I could turn these ideas into a blog that would be interesting to anyone who is not a math textbook editor.

I failed. After all, a lame joke like “zero is a pain in the ass” only takes you so far. I figured I would have to take a quote from my next book. But as fate would have it, the fifteen minutes I spent thinking about this were the fifteen minutes before the curtain rose on my latest musical theater experience: Billy Elliott. And as the show progressed, I became more and more certain that I had missed the point of Stanley’s comment entirely.

Billy Elliott is the story of an 11-year-old boy living in Britain during the 1984 coal strike. His father gives him money for boxing lessons, but when he is late one day, he ends up using the money for the ballet class that follows the boxing lesson. Turns out the kid is talented. And the talent unleashes a fiery passion. Billy wants to be a ballet dancer, and his talent and passion eventually gets the whole town full of coal-mining men behind him.

Billy Elliott is an emotionally charged show all on its own. With music written by Elton John, how could it not be? The melodies tugged at my heartstrings through the whole show. But my breaking point came about three-quarters of the way through the show, during a song called “Electricity.” Billy sings about the way dancing makes him feel. Something comes over him, he says, and he is just free. By the end of the song, I was crying.

So what does this have to do with zero? Well… my own personal zero made me cry.

Did I mention that Billy Elliott was the 64th musical I have seen? Musical theater has been a little hobby of mine since I was in sixth grade. I saw a high school production of The Music Man that year, and I immediately fell in love with the whole concept – a way of storytelling that recognizes the funniest, deepest, and most crucial moments, and pauses to let the characters sing about them. If only life would allow us to stop and expand all our most important moments that way. To really reflect on and appreciate them. (And maybe even to record ourselves singing about them, so we can listen to them again later!) (Okay, maybe not that last part.)

A few months later, I saw Bye Bye Birdie, and suffered a small shock when I saw one of my own classmates on stage. She sang, she danced, she smiled. She paused to sing at the big moments. And suddenly I realized that watching the shows was really only scratching the surface. I could actually be in a show.

I started to sporadically audition for musicals. I never got in while I was in middle school. While I was cast in several straight shows in high school, and performed in several musical theater workshops, I still never made it into a musical. Private voice lessons and spending hours upon hours volunteering at the community theater made no difference. I just didn’t have the voice or the confidence. I continued to audition, and my fervor to be cast did not abate. Yet the number of shows I had been in stayed stubbornly at zero.

Meanwhile, college application deadlines were swiftly approaching. To help juniors and seniors start thinking about college majors and career paths, my high school administered an interest and ability inventory. It asked questions about what you like to do and what you are good at, and spat out this nifty little graphic displaying your interests and abilities. Your ideal college major or career was supposedly in the area where your interests and abilities overlapped.

I still remember the day that my counselor laid my results down in front of me. My interests and my abilities pointed in completely opposite directions; there was no overlap at all. Interests: the arts. Abilities: math and science. My less-than-helpful counselor smiled sheepishly and said, “I guess you can do whatever you want!”

At age 17, I was not at all concerned with what the results said about my possible career paths. But when I looked at that graphic, something inside me understood that it wasn’t only interest that mattered. If I wanted to be in a musical, I needed some ability, too. And my audition record did not suggest that I had it.

I wouldn’t say that I completely gave up at that point, but as I left high school to go to college, and college to go to Chicago, opportunities to audition became fewer, and I did not seek them out. Instead, I just kept going to see shows.

And that brings me to yesterday, when I sat and watched my 64th musical and listened to a little boy sing about how dancing sets him free. And it made me cry. Because all I could think was, 64 times zero is still nothing.

As Billy sang about the electricity that goes through him when he dances, I couldn’t help but remember what made me fall in love with musical theater to begin with. It’s the expression and release of emotions. I’m a deeply, deeply emotional person, and I would give anything – anything – for the chance to stand up on stage and belt out a song that means something to me. That’s why I have always wanted to be in a musical. When I listen to the songs, I imagine the huge emotional release the characters (and the actors) must feel. And I’m jealous. I love watching musical theater, but ultimately, it only makes me want to be a musical more. Sixty-four musicals, or 100, or 1,000 – multiply that by zero, and it’s still nothing. I still haven’t experienced what I really want to experience.

A long time ago, I gave up on the idea of being in musical. I told myself that I wasn’t good enough.

But as I was falling asleep last night, I thought about my zero. I thought about how it only takes one to get from zero to one. Maybe, just maybe, if I put in some work, I could get from zero to one.

Zero times anything is still nothing. But multiply by one instead, and you can get anything. It only takes one to get from zero to one, but the difference between zero and one is huge.

All I want is one. One will be enough. And maybe, just maybe, one is attainable.

I’m starting private voice lessons next month.

Sometimes all it takes is one line.

I would not call myself an avid or voracious reader. It usually takes me a while to get through a book. My reading style is slow and methodical. The downside to this fact is that I don't read all that many books. The upside is that I usually clearly remember the ones I do read.

And I don't just remember the gist. Often, there is a line or two somewhere in a book that really sticks with me. Sometimes the lines are crucial to the story, sometimes not. But because I read every word so carefully, I always notice when there's a line that echoes with meaning in my real life.

I've thought for some time about recording these lines somewhere. Today, when I came across such a line in my latest book, I thought that maybe writing about these lines would make an interesting blog theme. So, tonight is the first attempt at making the idea work. Hopefully this produces an interesting record of both the books I read and various other aspects of my life that I think about as I read.

Right now I am reading a book called Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. It's a historical fiction novel involving archeological digs, past lives, and secret caves, but the details of the book are not particularly important to understanding my reaction to this line:

"Many nights in the early days of their marriage, watching her as she slept in the quiet of their chamber, he understood he was -- he could be -- a better man because he was loved by her."

That line brought a tide of bittersweet memories back to me. It's not so different from something I said to a friend several years ago, in a letter that laid my soul out on the table.

It's an old story, I suppose. Girl meets boy. Girl likes boy. Girl eventually falls desperately in love with boy. Boy does not love girl back. Girl can't let go.

I look back at the time I spent in love with this guy who did not love me back, and I wonder what I was thinking at the time. What did I think was going to happen? Was it that I thought he was going to change his mind? That he was lying to himself? That eventually he would realize that I was it?

While I don't doubt that these are some of the things I told myself, I don't think I really believed any of it. Hoped, perhaps. Yes, I hoped that he would change his mind. I hoped he would choose to love me instead of remaining so staunch in his belief that he didn't and couldn't ever feel that way about me. I had a hard time with that, because I don't believe that love is some predetermined, star-crossed thing. I don't believe that soul mates exist. Lasting relationships exist not between people predestined to love each other, but between people who have the courage to choose to love each other.

But even though I hoped that this guy would change his mind and choose to love me, I also saw the inherent catch-22: if I really believed love was a choice, I could also choose to stop loving him. It wouldn't happen overnight, and it would hurt, but I could do it.

So why didn't I? Why didn't I cut ties and move on? Why didn't I give myself the chance to meet someone else and fall in love again? While foolish hope was a part of it, I don't think that was the whole story. I never did quite put my finger on it, though.

When I read the line above, I was reminded of a hard day at the end of my time with this guy. Finally, the day when we would go our separate ways was coming. Time was forcing me to choose to stop loving him, even if I still did not want to. I struggled to know how to walk away without regret. I did not want to leave anything unsaid. So, I wrote a letter, and I poured the contents of my soul onto the page. By then I had come to terms with the idea that nothing was ever going to happen between us, but at least I would know that it wasn't because he didn't know how I felt.

Here's a testament to the way that the six years since I wrote that letter have changed me: I don't remember much of what I said. It was my whole life at the time, and now I can't remember it. Except for the last line.

I had come to the end, and I stared at the computer screen, wondering what could possible finish a letter like this. But my fingers began to move and this is what came out:

"I am a better person for having loved you. You are my northern star."

Though I didn't understand this at the time, as I was thinking about it today, I realized that this is the reason I spent three years choosing to continue to love him. Loving him made me a better person. My relationship with him, however one-sided, made me see the world differently and made me see myself differently, in ways that I liked. And that is why, to this day, I don't regret any of the time I spent loving him.

But that's not quite what the book quote says, is it? The character does not say that he is a better person for loving. He says he is a better person for being loved.

So do I believe that I made this guy a better person by loving him? Truthfully, I have no idea. When I was in the throes of this, it was all I could do not to collapse under the power and pain of my own emotions. I didn't spare any time or energy in thinking about what it must have been like for him, knowing that a person he considered to be among his dearest friends was desperately in love with him, and believing that he could not love her back.

As I think of this, there is a piece of me that still feels no sympathy. There's a piece of me that still twitches with frustration and anger at him for choosing not to love me. For refusing to love me.

But it couldn't have been easy for him, either. And even though I believe he could have made a different choice, there are two other things I also believe. First, that he didn't believe (and still doesn't believe) that he was in control of those feelings. And second, that he could have chosen to cut me out of his life when things got complicated. And he didn't.

So was he a better person for being loved by me? I still can't say for sure. But I do know that my loving him put him in some very difficult situations, and despite that, he clung for dear life to a friendship that would have been very easy to push out of his life. And that even though things are different now, it's a friendship that still carries on. It's a friendship that has taught us both a lot.

It's been a long time since I have thought about these tumultuous memories. For years, I have understood that it is better that we never ended up together. We see the world in very different ways these days, not to mention being happily settled in different parts of the country.

But I like to believe we are both better people -- me for having loved, and him for having been loved.

"... he was -- he could be -- a better man because he was loved by her."

I don't believe that we are necessarily better people simply by virtue of being loved, but perhaps we all can be -- if we choose to be.