Everyone is born into this world with a set of characteristics, proclivities, and personalities, simply, an identity. When we look in the mirror, we have a set of beliefs about ourselves that makes up our self-consciousnessness-this is what makes us human, being self-conscious. We go about our lives believing what we are told based on what our culture deems to be the right way to live. There are two things that seem to keep us from living the way we are supposed to be, or so it seems-time and tradition.
It is almost as if “progress” is inhibited by time and tradition. Time is simply the modern invention we have devised to schedule our life. It puts parameters on our daily living. Tradition is what has been imprinted on us by our biological leaders. Two texts that are ideal archetypes of how time and tradition inhibit us from really living and becoming who we were meant to be, or even want to be are “Ranch Girl” by Maile Meloy and “Time and the Machine” by Aldous Huxley. Tradition is indubitably the preeminent inhibitor of breaking free from mundanity.
In “Ranch Girl”, two of the main characters’ lives exemplify the strong grip tradition has on keeping people exactly where they are and halting progression. The main character, namely, the Ranch Girl herself explains how “if you’re white, and you’re not rich or poor but somewhere in the middle, it’s hard to have worse luck than to be born a girl on a ranch”(173). In her society, it is simply not the best thing in the world to be a ranch girl, but there doesn’t seem to be any alternative option, or so she thinks. Being “the foreman’s daughter”(173), she grew up helping her dad on “Ted Haskell’s Running-H cattle ranch”(173).
She was educated on everything there is to know about cattle ranching. Now, this would be tortuous for any teenage girl, or basically for any girl, however, the best part about working for Ted Haskell was that his daughter, Carla, became best friends with the ranch girl. The two would do normal girl things together and sometimes they would go to “the Hill”, which is the “park where everyone stands and talks after they get bored driving their cars in circles on the drag”(173). It is completely pitiful that driving cars in a circle was their form of entertainment.
As the ranch girl matures into a young woman the trapped feeling she gets being coined as a “Ranch Girl” and all that entails intensifies-she tries to fight these feelings. As any normal teenager, she experiences this intensification simultaneously as she goes through puberty and of course high school. She explains how “it’s OK to do well” in grade school, but “by high school, being smart gives people ideas”(175). Sadly, the Ranch Girl, and every other young person in this soporific society has been brainwashed that success can’t be achieved through education but by bull riding and other “country” things.
Fighting her significant desire for more in life, she decides to “start flunking” and “she’d skip, too, but the goal is to load up on D’s, not to get kicked out or sent into counseling. She can’t escape the feeling that she has been branded with a predestined fate. After trying her immature plan for a while, something devastating happens-Andy Tyler dies. Andy Tyler was the cool guy and was as country as they get in their community-he was the ranch girl’s ticket(her husband in her “perfect world”) to the plateaued, vapid life she wanted so badly because she didn’t think she could have anything else.
She believed the lie that she might as well go all the way with this ranch girl life. His death showed that her wanting to be a ranch girl was ephemeral and not sufficient to give her a good life. She always tried to downgrade from her real, intelligent, beautiful individuality. She might have been born a ranch girl, but she was an intelligent, sophisticated person who was different. After high school, Carla and the Ranch Girl go off to college, locally. Carla does well her first year, but she quit to marry the son of a rich family who lives and breathes livestock.
Carla’s dad is ecstatic. Carla wanted to be a vet. The traditions of living that have been passed down to these girls are taking over-they already engulfed Carla. Carla, profoundly said to the ranch girl, “you’re so lucky to have a degree and no kid, you can still leave”(177). The ranch girl knows that “she could leave and apply to grad school in Santa Cruz and live by the beach, take the research job in Chicago that her chemistry professor keeps calling about. ” She could even “go to Zihuatenejo with Haskell’s friends, who need a nanny.
They have tons of room, because in Mexico you don’t have to pay property tax if you’re still adding on to the house”(177). Despite all these beautiful opportunities, “none of these seem real; what’s real is the payments on her and her mom’s crazy horses, the feel of the ranch road she can drive blindfolded, and her dad needing her in November to bring in the cows”(177). She still has the choice to leave, but she is stuck in her familiar ways and she’s afraid of the unknown because she’ll be alone. She doesn’t want to give up her identity as being the ranch girlshe doesn’t want to leave her old self and not be able to find her new self.
Tradition and the predestined fate it “forces” on people is a complete travesty, because it keeps people stuck in their ways, however, time is another element that keeps people from expressing our maximum creative genius. Aldous Huxley explains how “time, as we know it, is a very recent invention”(365). This invention structures our society, telling us when we should do, well, everything. It has this indirect control over everything we do. Huxley explains how “time is our tyrant”(365). This obvious reality is exemplified in two popular factions of life-work and school.
The category of work, or as Huxley dubs it, “the office” (365), has become a place void of ingenuity. Success in work is now based on how much is done, not necessarily how much is accomplished or finished, in the least amount of time possible-progress means nothing because it only matters how much of the checklist is, well, checked off. Huxley describes how the “old artisan worked as it suited him with the result that consumers generally had to wait for the goods they has ordered from him”(365). Our microwave generation throws fits if things aren’t produced during the time is takes for them to check Facebook and respond to 20 texts.
In our school system, success is based on how much information is in the shortest amount of time possible, instead of how much understanding is cultivated. Humans have made time unnatural and we have tried to supersede the mere idea of the “biological clock”. Ultimately, our overly structured society is deleterious to the people. Time and tradition are the two main purveyors of the manifestation of humanity. The reason progress doesn’t occur is partly because of these two things, however, the reasoning can be taken one step further.
The reason we have time as we know it and tradition is because we are human. Tradition encapsulates the “this is how we do it” mantra-this can be accounted for in the form of religion and other belief systems. Time is just a medium that people use to control their out of control lives and it is quite successful in doing so. Tradition, however, controls people more. Tradition says it is ok to tell white lies, mock homosexuals, and make sure the tree tha bring into our house which covers our presents is taken care of. Both of these literature pieces quantify humanity.
Human nature fills the essence of these stories and time and tradition are just part of our human living system. Unfortunately, there are never any fulfilling answers to these issues, at least not in these stories. The people are always left stuck or confused, looking for answers. The answers aren’t found in tradition and time keeps us so anxious and preoccupied that we can’t even begin to look for truth. The first step in finding the truth is understanding who the people are in these stories as well as the authors-humans. The description of how the human race started is found in Genesis, which is where the truth starts.