In Julian Barnes' novel
Sense of an Ending, there are two key women in the life of Tony Webster, the narrator, who at that critical late-life reflective stage offer him two possible epitaphs. Whereas he refuses to heed her counsel regarding his ex-lover, his ex-wife tells him, "You're on your own now." And whereas he has totally miscalculated the fate of the ex-lover, she tells him, "You don't get it, do you?" So he weighs these choices for his gravestone. Will it be, "He's on his own now"? Or will it be, "Tony Webster--He Never Got It"?
Margaret, the ex-wife, who Tony describes as lacking in mystery, seems to me to have come up with the clearest and truest end punctuation to Tony's life...or anyone else's for that matter. Though religion tries mightily to mitigate the reality of it, at the end we really are all on our own. Veronica, the ex-lover and more mysterious woman, offers the more complex and damning send-off--you just didn't get it. Having been accused of "not getting it" at least once or twice in my life, I know what a stinging rebuke it can be. There's so much implied in that charge. For the person it’s aimed at, it calls into question his or her intelligence, interest, sensitivity, worldliness, decency, compassion.
The first time I faced the "You just don't get it" indictment, I was editor of my high school paper. I had been elected editor in my sophomore year, the first time the position had ever gone to anyone that young. This drew the attention of the chairman of the social studies department who took me aside one day and told me how proud he was of me and pointed out what a great opportunity I had in coming in so young to have two years to remake the paper into a student publication of substance. Shortly thereafter, my erstwhile champion instigated the confiscation of my first issue of the paper and became the chief interrogator when I was summoned to the principal's office to discuss my first editorial. In it I had called for a reform of the American History curriculum, arguing that the way it was currently structured made it impossible not to get bogged down in the early battles of the 18th and 19th centuries. This, I wrote, prevented the course from ever getting beyond World War I before school was out for the summer, leaving us woefully ignorant of the later war that affected most of our parents and shaped the world we were living in. For that bit of hellraising, I was told that I had put the jobs of six teachers in the history/social studies department at risk. I was told that I wasn't old enough or experienced enough to understand the political pressures the school faced in regards to budget. And who made me an expert on school curriculum anyway? In truth, they didn't actually use the expression you don't get it, but that was clearly the message.
That expression itself didn't come into vogue--if memory serves me well--until the 1970s and was made popular by feminists who hurled it at obtuse politicians--usually Republicans--who didn't seem to "get" women's issues. Far be it from me to make apologies for politicians, especially Republican politicians, but the fact that they didn't get women's issues should not have come as a surprise to anyone. Nor should it be much of a surprise when white folks don't get black folks or rich folks don't get poor folks or boy editors of high school papers don't get teachers with families to feed and mortgages to meet. How could any of those in one uniquely defined and insulated group ever fully understand the struggles of those in another such group? Seriously, can we really expect (or do we even want) the terminally obtuse Mitt Romney, say, to show up among a group of poor black folks and say, "I feel your pain?" Isn't "Who let the dogs out?" much closer to his experience and more true to his heart?
Science suggests that it really doesn't take that literal walk of a mile in another person's shoes to really "get" them. But it wasn't until I became a public school teacher in New Hampshire myself that I was able to understand the fear my editorial had struck into the hearts of my teachers back home. There, in the Live Free or Die state, I saw firsthand what it was like to be teaching in a hostile environment where a sizeable block of citizens openly opposed public education and were politically aggressive in acting on their belief. I learned fast how sensitive a public educator might become to a rearguard action by some know-it-all student editor.
So finally--about 10 years later--I got it. But that raised another question: Did I also get those in that New Hampshire town who were so against my pursuit of my profession? Well, I think I did. I think they didn't like paying for the education of other people's children, and they didn't like paying to have their own children educated in things they themselves found alien or threatening, and they didn't like paying for teachers to have jobs with summers off. But maybe I didn’t get all of it. Maybe in individual cases there was more--maybe granddad started the family business without a lick of schoolin’, maybe mom was a drop-out who still managed to raise six kids, maybe dad was a functional illiterate who was scared shitless to have his kids get ahead of him. There can be myriad of layers to work through for us to finally get other human beings, which is why putting "getting it" at the center of a public debate is only asking for trouble…or seething resentment at the least.
And it's really no more helpful in personal matters. In The Sense of an Ending Tony Webster is quite chivalrous in assuming the blame for not getting it about Veronica and his role in turning her from a lover into an ex-lover. In hindsight he's quite perceptive about all the things in their relationship that he either missed or misinterpreted that led him to not getting it. But if I were Tony's lawyer, I would have cautioned him against assuming too much guilt. He was after all either youthful or absent when most of the key events in Veronica's life happened. Even his most egregious act—a very nasty letter he wrote to Veronica—was the product, as he admits, of his immaturity. He couldn't possibly have been expected to see all the moving pieces--all the hidden clues--that would've been necessary to fully get the it of her life. There had to be a modicum of obligation on Veronica's part--as there should be on anyone who accuses another of not getting it--to try and explain herself. If, that is, she truly wanted to be understood and not simply wanted to score points off Tony's not getting it. She could have said to him, I don't think you have enough input to fully understand what I've gone through, so please allow me to fill in some important blanks for you. Of course if Veronica had said that to Tony, Julian Barnes would've had a self help book on his hands, not a novel, and surely not a novel where the mesmerizing final ten pages are totally dependent on the utterly peremptory judgment: You don't get it.
You don't get it definitely has a contemporary, edgy feel to it. It's made for drama—for novels and movies and TV shows and such. It’s not for real life relationships, which should be striving for clarity and resolution over drama. When one levels the charge at another person, either in public debate or personal argument, the message essentially comes down to "Shut up!"--with the added value of insult. Telling someone they don’t get it is the end of understanding, not the beginning. And that can only lead to the senselessness of an ending.