I get asked that a lot. As I’ve written in a prior post, people worry that I am revealing other people’s secrets. I’m not.
I write about life. Real life. Most of life isn’t full of ugliness and the dregs of cruelty and evil. Most of life is about love and hope and overcoming setbacks, about despair and starting over. It’s figuring out who we are, and how to be, as life keeps pelting us with new challenges.
A lot of fiction, memoirs and essays focus on the worst. So does most of the news. And, spending a career trying to accompany people in dealing with and healing from some of the worst, I understand that some people find this engaging. I am not naïve about the existence of evil; I know it does exist. I get to encounter it, and its effects, up close and personal. Thus, its entertainment value is absolute zero. And I mean that in the scientific sense, not metaphorically.
A protagonist who overcomes mutants or beats up all the bad guys, without so much as a shillelagh against the enemy’s 22nd century weapons, is not someone I can identify with at all. Frankly, I am hesitant and vaguely nauseous about taking on a large Florida insect with a can of bug spray and a paper cup. The cup is to cover it while it suffers because I find it upsetting, albeit less upsetting than encountering said insect near my sleeping bag.
But probably everyone can identify with being put down; underestimated; loneliness; grief; joy; love; fear of the real things that come into every life – disease, misfortune and the suffering of loved ones. Spiritual doubts. Growing up and growing old. Having babies and emptying the nest. Not having babies when you want them desperately. Looking forward with hope; looking back with regret. Job loss, career success, financial challenges, relentlessly naughty and lovable animal companions. Friendships that grow into romance and friends who are family.
And then, how do we manage this? How do different people sort through their choices, navigate the outcomes, excavate the meaning and joys of life in the midst of the mess?
I write about the intersections of people’s complicated and messy lives, and the miracles of kindness that can grow there. It isn’t all pretty, and it is not all ugly, either.
