Chekhov's Gun

"If a pistol appears in a story, eventually it's got to be fired."
-Colonel Sander's summary of Chekhov's Gun from Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

It's troubling to me that this idea carries weight.
In a perfect world, it should be nothing more than a wry observation about the formulaic nature of literature; a truism equivalent to "the good guy always gets the girl." - relevant to fiction, irrelevant to reality.

But that's not really how it works. I feel like i spend a good part of my life waiting for Chekhov's Guns - trying to identify and assemble the future meaning of seemingly innocuous events. No object is acceptable as arbitrary - its meaning is only concealed, its purpose yet to be unveiled.

To give a very extreme example, In a strange way i take comfort in the fact that i am starting to bald. it's a Gun that points to continuity - why would i start going bald if its not leading somewhere? The trigger has not been pulled, which means there has to be an act three in the making.

Of course, this isn't foolproof. And when a gun doesn't go off - when a conspicuous prop proves irrelevant - it ruptures the assumed narrative flow of our lives. It forces front and center a feeling of pointlessness usually kept at bay by the 'purposefulness' of coincidence.

It would seem then that a belief in Chekhov's guns is part of the unspoken fate component to Sheilaism.

(Sheilaism is religion without doctrinal authority;it is a patchwork of personal pseudo-religious convictions that make up each of our individual "secular" philosophies. It's religion without orthodoxy - because it is 'ours,' it is without accountability to tradition or a larger body. Hunches and compulsions act as a source of meaning that in a past era would have been explained with reference to the church.)

I'll have to spend some more time thinking about the other components...