See the Cat? See the Cradle?

Listen:

When I was a younger man—ten years ago, a full head of hair ago, four hundred books ago…

When I was a much younger man, I visited a Books-a-Million in the mall for a book by Kurt Vonnegut.

It could have been any of his books.

I asked the young cashier for a recommendation.

She led me to a shelf and pointed at a sky-blue book with a vacant birdcage on the cover beside the title: Cat’s Cradle.

The book is an apocalyptic tale narrated by a man who told us to call him Jonah. Written as a flashback, Cat’s Cradle follows Jonah’s quest to write a book about what famous Americans were doing the day that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The book also introduces an absurd religion (aren’t they all?) called Bokononism, led by its creator, Bokonon.

Reading Cat’s Cradle for the first of many times felt like finding a map to navigate the rest of my life despite never realizing such a map ever existed or lacked in my life in the first place. The string game of Cat’s Cradle reflects the way the book explores truth and how people choose to accept certain small lies, or foma, to make themselves feel better about the world.

Busy, busy, busy.

I always wanted to be a writer. As it happened—As it was meant to happen, Bokonon would say—discovering Cat’s Cradle and consuming it in the days thereafter challenged everything I knew about what a book could be. This would be compounded by Vonnegut’s other books, which are rife with trips to outer space, doodles inked by the author, as well as visits from Vonnegut himself. Humans are only confined by the abstract limits we set for ourselves. No limits existed for Vonnegut.

I’d like to think the cashier who suggested the book is a member of my karass, teams that do God’s Will without discovering what they’re doing. I never saw her after that transaction, and she likely forgot me by the end of her shift. But the book she sold me changed my life.

Since reading Cat’s Cradle, my thirst for books has become insatiable. I’m passionate about collecting, reading, and learning from them. They teach me empathy and expand my understanding of the world and the disparate people who inhabit it. That book guided me to an English degree, fiction workshops, and a writing career. I am me because of Cat’s Cradle.

As I navigate the world, dodging the periodic pool-pah and avoiding granfalloons, I occasionally tell myself foma to trick myself into thinking I have a decent understanding of the world and what’s to come.

And whenever I worry about life and its grand meaning, I return to my favorite Calypso from The Books of Bokonon:

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'

Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand.”