Good People

One of the things I did, when I found out that B. had breast cancer, was take a basket into K's study and fill it up with books. They are K's books, not mine, but I recognized a lot of them. I pulled all the ones that I'd read and enjoyed once upon a time, even if I couldn't remember much about what happened in them. I took these over to B.'s house and let her choose the ones she thought might be interesting and upbeat.

In some ways, having cancer can be a real good time. For instance, it's a real good time to catch up on your reading. With surgery to heal from, and chemo knocking you on your ass, and all those overwhelming, terrifying feelings that make it hard to get out of bed in the morning, it's no problem fitting in a chapter or two every day.

I think I read more books last July than I had during the entire year of 2007. Maybe that's why I started writing. When you surround yourself with books it starts to seem like everybody is writing; like writing is the only thing really worth doing. Also, suddenly, I had the time. And a topic.

At first, I only wrote here, in my Double Whammy Diary. But later, I wrote in a journal too. I started setting aside 3 hours every weekday, just for writing. Most of what I write is garbage, just a step above word salad. Wilted word salad. I don't really know why I'm doing it. It feels good. It feels important. It feels like an act of faith that someday something good might come out of my hours at the keyboard. I might not recognize it if is ever does. I guess that's okay. There might be something good coming out of it now. I really don't know.

I told B. about these daily dates and she loaned me a book about writing. It is by Anne Lamott, whose work I've never read. The title is Bird by Bird. She says a lot of good things that I like to hear. She says to keep writing, even if you never get anything published. She says to keep writing even if no one ever reads your work. She says to keep writing even if you are terrible at it. I like this kind of encouragement.

But when she gets to the chapter about characters she starts to loose me. Maybe it doesn't matter, because I don't really want to write fiction and I don't need to worry about inventing characters. But I think what she said represents a world view that swamps us all, whether we are real live people, or a collection of words on a page.

Here is what she writes:

...you are probably going to have to let bad things happen to some of the characters you love or you won't have much of a story. Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences, and we do not all behave perfectly all the time. As soon as you start protecting your characters from the ramifications of their less-than-lofty behavior, your story will start to feel flat and pointless...

I think there was a time when I felt like that, that mostly the world lines up in an orderly stream of cause and effect. But what "less than lofty behaviour" resulted in B. getting breast cancer? What action of mine resulted in the consequence of having my right breast removed? This strikes me as a silly childish way of thinking. Isn't it time we all grew up and faced the fact that there is no Big Daddy up in the sky ready to take us out for ice cream if we are good girls and boys, or taking off his belt if we are bad. Things just happen. Bad things happen to good people and if there were such a thing as bad people, good things would often be their lot.

This may not be comforting. But it's liberating. When we finally get this fact...that we are already good enough, and that working to be better won't protect us...we might be able to relax, and finally enjoy all the blessings that are already ours.

Looking out the study window, I can see that it is a beautiful day outside. On the other side of the street, my rude and horrible neighbor can see the same beautiful day through her window. And I'm okay with that.