The Book of Life

Sometimes when I crack open a novel and start to read the first page I get overwhelmed. So many new people, new lives to encounter, a whole new world to inhabit. Of course, that's what attracts me about stories, usually, but on some days it's just a little more than I can take.

Reading novels makes me a voyeur into lives I watch through the window of my imagination. There is no reciprocity, no chance for a real, human connection. Sometimes, this makes me sad because it's reminiscent of real life, of my experience with acquaintances I encounter semi-regularly. I don't really know them and they don't really know me, not in any personal or profound way. Co-workers are often like this, not real friends, just people with whom one has a point of contact--the job--but nothing more.

Sometimes, I want something more. Often I feel as though I see people, really see who they are, but can't communicate that because they don't know that I've had that glimpse into their hearts and might be uncomfortable if they knew what I'd seen. With fictional characters it doesn't matter. Their lives are spelled out on the page for anyone brave enough to enter, laid bare by the author who tells on their sex lives, what they look like naked, their secret fears, the longings of their hearts. If I'm not up for that much exposure to another's soul, I can close the book and read it another time.

Real life isn't like that. I don't have that kind of control over what I see. It can be quite painful to me to have unauthorized glimpses into people's souls, especially when I care about someone and see hurt or vulnerability that I'm not in a position to acknowledge. Of course, if I don't care about the person, then I'm much freer to blow them off, to look the other way, to pretend I haven't seen their private wounds.

Perhaps we all do this--see yet do nothing because it's not our place, because the relationship doesn't allow for it. I don't really know as I've never talked about this with anyone. Perhaps being compassionate means seeing, caring, doing what is possible given the nature of the relationship. The help I might like to give isn't necessarily help the person wants to receive.

It works the other way, too. For example, I don't like to give money to panhandlers because I don't like the nature of the relationship it forces upon both of us: Victim of life in need of monetary handout on one side; fortune's favorite dispensing largess on the other. I don't believe in either of those roles yet that's the nature of the relationship implied in panhandling. And I'm inconsistent because some days I give money because that's the only point of contact allowed and it seems to me that some positive human connection is better than none.

Some positive human connection is better than none. I guess that's what I aspire to in my relationships, even when the depth falls short of what might be possible. When even that little bit of positive connection isn't possible, then I'll simply retreat from the field and escape into a good book where all the messiness of the human condition can be neatly contained between two pieces of cardboard.