December 2000

Quick, I have to get this off quickly. That is, if my editor hasn’t already replaced this column with a filler from the files. You see, I’m late, by about a week. I have a good excuse; I’ve been away in the States. My good intentions of writing this piece during the trip was superceded by being swept up with the rush of old reunions and marveling how New York City has changed in the four years since I visited. Oh, that’s not counting the numbers of hours I spent browsing through as many bookstores as I could walk past.

After a year-long relationship with Amazon.com, whose brown boxes arrived on my doorstep more regularly than the monthly electric bill (not a hard task since I’ve never actually seen my mailman), I was able to touch the real thing. Gone were fond memories of punching the keys for “My Shopping Cart.” In its place, the familiar sight of Barnes and Nobles green became the destination of any stroll.

While some of you may think I spent the entire time camped in the Self Help section, the 30 lbs of cookbooks in my suitcase attests to my weakness for life-size glossies of “Fettuccine Alfredo” and “Thicker Than Mud Pie.” A personality make-over I can always use, but a better recipe for “Roadhouse Chili” would complete my cooking repertoire.

However, taking a break from my intimate moment with Martha Stewart, I did make a detour to the side devoted to food for the soul. What struck me even in that quick walk-through was the myriad of books to teach one on finding just about anything:

How to Find Love (Money, Power, and Better Skin),
How to Keep Love (blah, blah),
How to Hold On to the Love (blah, blah.) You Don’t Really Want While Looking for the Love (blah, blah) You Do Want

Well, you get the picture.

Not to do any injustice to the authors who wrote the books with . . . well, loving intentions . . . the numerous titles must say something about what we want as a people. And the kind of life we want.

We want a life of joy and happiness, of having everything work out the way we planed, the way we dreamed it would. We want someone to love and to love us, work that we can be passionate about, good health, a happy home, a great deal on a townhouse with a garden and a car that drives like a dream. What’s on your list? But if we’re over fourteen – or even four days for some – then we know life isn’t like that.

Some years ago, on the eve of my China adventure, I remember coming across a short little book that caught my eyes. Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People. I don’t recall the name of the author, the exact tales he recounted, or even his conclusions. But the question is a familiar one. We have all known such instances in our own lives: kind and generous people who are wasting away in agonizing illness or ruin while the most miserly mean-spirited croons get rich off a windfall. Even in our own lives: times when we prepared and worked hard to land the perfect job (house, relationship, blah, blah) only to have it go to someone who has neither skill in that area, nor seem to care for it at all. And so it goes.

I remember that as I stood in the isle and read it almost from cover to cover (these bookstores want you to do that, they even have chairs), I began to sense that something was not quite right in the way the question was presented. What exactly, are bad things?

There was another book, The Diving-Bell & The Butterfly written by Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle. Completely paralyzed after suffering a massive stroke, he could move only one eyelid. He wrote the book shortly before his death in 1997 with the help of an assistant who counted the number of blinks to figure out the letter he wanted.

Would this qualify as something bad? And what did this soul, locked in the most tragic depth of suffering, and with Herculean effort of will, what did he write about? What did he want to leave as a legacy to the world, and to his two young children?

“...when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have the ear of a butterfly.”

I would not want this illness nor wish it on anyone. But who can say with certainty that in the breath and scope of this one man’s life, that hearing the butterfly wasn’t good – even given the price. Which one of us can claim to see such exquisite perfection in this chaotic and imperfect world? Then there are those with other lives, blessed with health and fortune, who still manages to find the hidden pathways to despair. We know those stories as well.

Isn’t it the individual then, who assigned the good and bad judgements to the events of our lives? Knowing this, we still wish for the good: the good job, the good relationship, the good life. We work for it, anticipate it, expect it, and then feel entitled to it. We go after it with such exaggerated energy and focus that we don’t have any left when life gives us another scenario altogether. We don’t hear the butterflies because we’re busy lamenting our bad luck.

When I open the door to my room, I let the outside air in. I cannot say: bad air keep out, I want only the good air in. But it is the very air that sustains me, it is what I need to live.
So I take it all in, the bad and the good. And each breath is wonder. I want every breath, every moment of this unconditional life.

Life is a gift, only if you take it all – without expectations. I want to feel the glory of the sun on my face and the icy sting of sleet at my back. I want to know the joy in every achievement and the despair of each failure. I don’t want one instant less of the bliss or tragedy that life offers, for it is all part of the package.

In this holiday season, here’s wishing that your package is filled to the brim.