Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
--Ernest Hemingway
I have this image that won't go away. It's of a tall, broad, tired-looking woman; her long hair is sloppily tied back—a gray, lank ponytail---and she wear a sort of shapeless linen shift. She is standing near the edge of a cliff, overlooking the sea. She is watching ships as they slowly approach the shore, and as they come closer, she grows more animated. The possibilities—the people or the goods or the news—those ships may bring seem to excite her.
Then she sees a plane, and then she hears it, because it's coming closer. It will land at the airport near her. The woman puts a finger into the air, traces the plane's path. Her tired face is transformed now, glowing. Between the ships and that plane: what wonders may arrive?
Behind her, children play. She is meant to watch those children, and she's forgetting. They are playing with dangerous things: fragile glass, pointed sticks. One finds a knife under a bush and shouts.
A baby crawls toward her, awkwardly, not exactly on target. That baby is headed right to the cliff.
Suddenly, the woman seems to come back to herself; she lurches around and gasps. She must grab the baby of course, but the child with the knife is toddling off on unsteady feet.
Her attention's been elsewhere, and now there's real danger right where she is.
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My attention always seems to be drawn to Otherworld these days,---to Otherworld where everything is better. In Otherworld, the bookstores have more books and big soft chairs, and the staff WANT me to sit down and read. Spend the whole afternoon if you want, they say! In Otherworld, I grab three memoirs from the New Books section, and I settle in…
…The coffee shops are better in Otherworld, too. They always brew amazing, rich, dark decaf, and my favorite chair and table are always waiting for me. The baristas are welcoming and friendly—but not too friendly, if you know what I mean: they don't demand conversation or over-inquire. But they remember my favorites; they have an array of gluten-free goodies on offer. They make sure I am comfortable, that my order is hot, fresh, just right,--and then they smile and leave me to finish the book I bought in the Otherworld book shop.
In Otherworld, everyone is tapped into their creativity, and there's no pandemic; houses, shops, parks, and yards are decorated on a spectrum that ranges from very clever to awe-inspiring. Their theater has the BEST movies, new and old; their auditorium hosts amazing acts. I can swim at the vast pool in Otherworld, and there are incredible hiking trails.
If I'm feeling sociable, my favorite peeps are in Otherworld, too, but I can also have unlimited quiet time there.
By the way, the food is amazing in Otherworld—sometimes cooked by me, sometimes eaten at one of the hundreds of absolutely amazing restaurants. And I am THIN in Otherworld, no matter how much I indulge.
In Otherworld, I still have my job that I love, but I am so full of energy that I spin words into essays and stories and reviews every day, so I work as a writer, too.
If only I could stay in Otherworld…everything would be delightful.
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I see Otherworld all the time---on Facebook and Instagram; on Goodreads; on Internet searches. My gaze is fixed on it: fixed outward. Like the woman on the cliff, sometimes I forget what's going on in Real World until an incident has become an emergency.
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It is good to think globally; it really is. But I need to live locally, too.
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There are kids in my town who need help. And there are people doing their best to help them.
I know a woman, for instance, who's mentored a girl through Big Brothers Big Sisters for close to 15 years. When they were matched, the child had never left the county where she was born. She lived in poverty, and she thought the woman's ordinary house was a palace.
The girl has a family, mind you: one that loves her. It was her family members who signed her up, got her a "Big"---they knew she was smart; they wanted her to have the opportunities they knew were out there. They just didn't have any idea of how to open those doors.
The woman spent time with the girl, helped her with homework, talked to her about her strengths and talents. Once in a while, they'd take a ride to another city, or to some sort of destination—just to see what was out there, just to realize all those things were accessible to the girl, too. They played sports and they talked about all kinds of challenging (but not insurmountable) problems.
They celebrated successes.
The woman helped the girl's family with things like filling out a FAFSA, visiting colleges, and applying for admission.
The girl is a college senior now, doing a professional internship this summer, poised, professional, and excited about the future. She's excited for herself, and she's excited for her family, who supported her; her success can change all of their lives.
The only way to know what difference the woman who is the "Big Sister" made is hardly ethical…give one kid a Sister, let the other kid work it through without. (Although, now that I think about it, our society does let a lot of kids figure it out for themselves, every day, despite the best efforts of caring teaching, guidance counselors, pastors, coaches, and other professionals.) We can't prove that the woman helped that girl get to where she is.
But that strong, caring relationship must have been a factor.
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I have told this story before, I know, but it seems relevant here. When Mark was in law school, I belonged to a book club through the library of a little town nearby. They read unique and fascinating books, and one summer we were discussing Gregory Williams' Life on the Color Line. As a child, Williams believed he was white; his father said his family was Italian. But when Williams was very young, his parents split up. He and his brother went with his father to Muncie, Indiana, where, to Gregory's shock, he found out his dad, and his dad's family, was Black.
The boy's life was more than challenging. There was poverty, there was neglect; there was violence and abuse. But one thing didn't waver: the father, even when incapacitated by addiction, always told Gregory that he could succeed, that the boy had the intelligence and the drive to make something of himself. He didn't always tell his son that nicely, but the belief was out there.
Gregory Williams went on to earn his doctorate; he served as president of the University of Cincinnati and of New York's City College.
My book club read that book and talked about it at the same time as Mark was interning with a local judge. The judge had to deal with a horrendous case. A young man and his friend decided to shake down a crack house. When they got there, the house's owners had company; I think there may have been seven people there, including a dad with a two-year-old, and a girl who was just budding into her teen years.
The young man and his friend wanted drugs and they wanted money. They lined up all the people in the house and shot them. The miracle, I guess, is that all the people weren't killed, but that two-year-old baby was, and the girl just blossoming into young womanhood was too.
Of course, the killers ran, but they didn't get far before they were apprehended. There wasn't much doubt that they were guilty; their trials went quickly.
Then it came time for the judge to decide the first young man's sentence. The death penalty was a possible outcome; this was not a decision lightly taken. Mark sat through the hearings that led to the decisions, and he came home and described what he'd heard.
The young shooter's early story sounded so much like the college president's early days, except for one thing: no one told the young killer that they believed in him. No one said he could do better, that he had a future. Instead, Mark reported, the young man's grandmother said he'd been smacked around since he was a baby, that no one took the time to raise him.
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I believe strongly in the strengths-based philosophy: I believe that each person has significant strengths, and that the goal should be to find those strengths and develop them. Wouldn't it be wonderful if each child had the wherewithal to discover their gifts, early on, and then to strengthen them, hone them, experiment with all the different ways those gifts could bloom into fruition—into a happy life where, despite normal stresses and annoyances, that child grows into an adult who loves the work they do?
In fact, I think that's my definition of utopia: a world where each person is fully actualized. Imagine. Just imagine the power of that.
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I think, though, that a lot of kids don't find that spark, early on; they don't open a door and discover something that imprints: click! The click! is the moment the child knows: I will work with animals/help sick people/run experiments/do something with numbers/make cars run so that they hum/teach children to read/play piano/play baseball…or whatever it is, that firm cable of commitment and fascination.
I worry that some kids, unconnected to a strength, go looking for it in Otherworld. These days, the easiest way to get to Otherworld is electronically. And there's a lot of misleading communication out there.
What if an untethered kid finds the wrong place to tether, online? What if a predator latches on? And what if nobody knows about it in Realworld?
Then we're like the woman in that image of mine: we're standing on the cliff, looking outward, looking to Otherworld, while the child right behind us is in danger.
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There is so much to be done, so many broken things, in this world of ours. There are solutions to the horrors we endure that seem obvious to people from other countries, looking in. And we need to right laws, we need controls, we need national leadership. We need to work toward that.
But it doesn't all happen there, in some big arena, far away. And all that big arena stuff doesn't all happen NOW. Those wheels grind awfully slowly.Now, maybe I can do something on my own patch, right where I am: I can't fix everything, but I can support my family in using their strengths; I can try to put my strengths into play at work; and I can find a way to reach out, or maybe to enable someone else who's better at it to reach out, to that one kid who may need someone to say to her, "You are an amazing artist! Let's frame that picture."
I can stop peering into Otherworld quite so much and start looking around my own little patch. Today is a good day to start, I think; I might just go mooch around one of the used bookstores here in town, and follow that up with a trip to a new coffee shop that just opened, after I send an email to a woman I know whose organization helps a whole lot of kids. Maybe there's a volunteer slot there that's kind of me-shaped.
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Do you have a story of how one young person was helped by a one person who believed in them? If you do, and want to share it, I would love to post it here…
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