Book 15: "Tuesdays with Morrie"

Morrie Schwartz, dancing. 

I know I've fallen behind in my posts. The post right before this one is Book 11: And the Mountains Echoed, and since I've finished that book last week, I've completed "The Art of Racing in the Rain" and "Animal Farm," but haven't found time to write about them. I've found that it's so much easier to read books than reflect about them. So why am I skipping ahead? Because Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson was so simply overwhelming that I find it impossible to move on without first writing this post. 

Tuesdays with Morrie was published awhile ago in 1997. The events of the story interweave with then-current events like the OJ Simpson trial, and it's a reminder of how many years have passed since what seemed like significant events of the day. 1997 was an important year for me because it marked the first year that I attended Punahou School, and ten years before I would graduate from high school in 2007. Back in 1997, when I was 8, I had no idea where I would end up today, but I had dreams of becoming a doctor, living in Kahala and sending my own kids to Punahou. When Mitch Albom wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, he had no idea that he would be asked to write a new afterward for the book in 2007, after the book had sold millions of copies around the world. He reflects on the success of the book in the afterward, saying that the point of the book was to raise a litlte money to help pay for his old Sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz's, medical bills. He couldn't imagine that the book would go on to be a best seller, much less a source of inspiration for so many people. It is rare that a work of literature can transcent so many social and cultural barriers to influence so many lives. And I think it's even rarer for a book passed on by recommendation to become a bookshelf classic that feels intensely personal. 

In my case, Tuesdays with Morrie was recommended by my good friend Corey. When I told him  at the beginning of summer that I decided to read as many books as I could, he immediately went into his room to fetch a stack of books he had browsed or read through. Among some of the niche books he had pulled out about physics (which doesn't really mean anything in my head) were a couple gems, including The Art of Racing in the Rain and Tuesdays with Morrie. Although I went to Barnes and Noble and bought the books, I did so grudgingly because I'm generally skeptical about recommended books. After all, if reading is a personal experience, how can anyone but you know what you'd like best? I put the books aside and read books I chose first. Finally, as the viable choices on the pile dwindled, I found myself reaching for the slim books Corey suggested I read. In the end, it turns out the books he recommended are aruably better than ones I thought I'd love but didn't.

Tuesdays with Morrie is about the author's fourteen weeks spent with Morrie Schwartz. They met on Tuesdays in Morrie's home, and each week Morrie would teach Mitch different life lessons. Interspersed between the weekly recaps, Albom recounts his own struggles and failings and teacher-student moments with Morrie at Brandeis University. Unlike The End of Your Life Bookclub, which was also about the death of an inspirational "real" person but I only occassionally related to, this book was a nonstop commentary about my own life, and of all the books I've read, this one came closest to inciting a real change in the way I proceed from this summer onwards. 

From the get-go, Morrie is portrayed as someone you want to know, the kind of person who lights up the room, dances to the beat of his own drum, brings people together and loves unconditionally (to speak in cliches). He is the rare person who I would probably be suspicious of initially but then love endlessly. Mitch is also very relatable. He's the vessel through which we see Morrie and he portrays his old professor with honesty. He never makes the book about an exclusive relationship with Morrie, it's always about the ways Morrie affected everyone around him equally. Over the course of fourteen weeks, Mitch reconnects with Morrie, and as "Coach" deteriorates rapidly with each chapter, Mitch seems to grow wiser. There is a part of the book, towards the end, where Morrie explains that he believes that within each person is a tiny version of themselves, and when the larger individual dies, the tiny being goes on to inhabit something else. Mitch reflects on this in the afterward, as well, realizing that by participating in the writing of the book, Morrie's tiny self has come to inhabit every reader's heart. In a small way, every one who related to this book is a little wiser, and Morrie's spirit continues to teach long after he's gone. 

Here are my favorite lessons from Morrie, select quotes are accompanied by my personal thoughts in italics.

The tension of opposites: "Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted."

"The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it."

I think the hardest lesson to apply to life is this one. Culture is a conglomeration of the trends and beliefs in society. Something that is only important to one or a few people can never become a part of a culture. I know I've spent way too long trying to "fit in," trying to be an early adopter of the latest toys, gadgets, styles and slang words. I always wanted to be popular growing up, but I never was. It was a constant source of misery for me, to feel like I never belonged, and it was a source of tension between my parents and I. No matter how hard I begged and how many things my parents bought me, I could never break into the popular group. After I graduated from Punahou and I stopped seeing my old classmates every day, I inadvertently dissociated myself from the rat race of popularity. Nowadays there's a term for people who don't buy into pop culture--"hipster"--which has, unfortunately, made them a documented part of culture. It's only now, so many years later, that I realize how much a waste of energy all of that was. You might be able to impress some people with stuff you own, but you'll never get their respect without earning it. The strongest cause we can present to others for our popularity is our identity. Being yourself and being confident in who you are and what you stand for is way more attractive than any amount of sucking up or desperation. In a way, the most successful definers of pop culture--celebrities, athletes, moguls--ascended to their positions because they were who they were without caring what anyone else thought. It's almost impossible to be original when you're too focused on copying what others are doing, and it's impossible to stand out if you're trying to wear someone else's hat. In the end, I realize that the only person who can make me happy is myself, and that I need to step back from culture to see who I truly am.

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

This quote spoke to me because it made me think about the things I focus and spend time on. I realized that I watch too much TV, read too much pop culture news and give more thought to others' lives than to my own, in the process doing detriment to my life and wellbeing. It goes a long way to consider what and who you're chasing, and to question whether what you're focusing on deserves all that energy. One of the best things to come out of all this reading has been the time I've spent away from TV and movies. It's put me in a more introspective mindset, and I find that my capacity for philosophy and engaging in my every day experiences has expanded.

"Love is the only rational act."

In truth, I don't understand what this means, but I hope that I will one day when I find love. Right now, I can see all the ways in which it opens up life to irrationality, but I can't see the flip side.

"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."

"Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. But there's a better approach. To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living."

I know Morrie is essentially expanding on the phrase "to live in the moment" but I always find it hard to actually put it into practice. It's hard not to let fears for the future or regrets from the past permeate into the day. It's human to remember our chronologies, but hard to forget it. We're taught to plan and reach for more, and we naturally forget our fallibility. It's also hard, I think, to consider our mortality, accept it and move towards a semblance of positivity. Death is always such a depressing thought because it's the ultimate end of all ends. It's the final, unwanted goal of all living beings and it depresses us that we can't defy it physically. How can it be possible to accept death and not become reckless? That's the challenge that we are all presented with--the balance of accepting and embracing it. 

"The truth is, Mitch, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

"Mitch, even I don't know what 'spiritual development' reallly means. But I do know we're deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted."

I am guilty of this, but I'm determined to change.

"Love each other or perish."

"This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there's someone who is watching out for them. It's what I missed so much when my mother died--what I call your 'spiritual security'--knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work."

"You know what the Buddhists say? Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it...If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails."

"Aging is not decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

Interesting to think of aging and wisdom as being conversely related. The older we get, the wiser we become, and without the process of aging and all it entails, we can't grow.

"You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue."

This quote stuck out to me because it mentioned competitiveness. I think I've been raised for competitive situations. When push comes to shove I thrive in the pressure situations and probably crave them now than I did when I played competitve tennis. But competition can also be unhealthy if applied to all areas of life. Looking back incites competition with ourselves to take more and more and be a better person by cultural or materalistic standards--money, cars, houses, jobs, etc. Aging and learning lessons as we age cannot be artificially stimulated. If we try to force life experiences then we might miss the opportunities for organic wisdom that exist all around us in the present. 

On material possessions: "You can't take it with you."

"Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"Mitch, if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."

This was one of the top five lessons in my opinion, and it hits close to my ego. As great as Punahou is, a lot of what goes on among students outside of the classroom is competition based on materialistic criteria. We grew up keeping up with trends, later that obsession became about cars or our parents' occupations, where we lived, which colleges our families could claim legacy at. At the upper echelons of each class were the kids whose families had buildings named after them. I was bred to compare quality and quantity, and even though I know what humble origins look like since I started at UH-Manoa, I still have a hard time abandoning the tendency to meet someone and immediately try to outdo them. When Morrie said this, it rang so simple and true. At the end of the day, the people who care about the things you show off might not be the best people to be around, and if you lose everything, if you are stripped of everything and you stand before them with only your soul, will they still love you? It made me think about who I present myself as and it made me resolve to redefine who I say I am and who I act as. For one, I'm not my parents, and everything I have is because they enabled me. I can't claim to have achieved their success, so I shouldn't claim their rewards. What I should focus on is making  my own success and maybe one day being able to say that I matched or outdid theirs. 

"Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back."

"I believe in being fully present. That means you should be with the person you're with...Part of the problem, Mitch, is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven't found meaning in their lives, so they're running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running."

I am definitely guilty of violating this one. People who know me occasionally say that they can tell that I'm not paying attention. When people talk about things I don't find interesting, or I'm uncomfortable discussing, I zone out and start thinking of what I want to talk about. I can't remember when it started, but I've been actively working on changing. I try to ask questions and really process and save the answers. Sometimes I ask questions to be polite, but I try to ask because I really want to know. It's had to care about others when life moves too quickly, but I also think it's important for me to create relationships and maintain friendships. 

"Well, I feel sorry for this generation. In this culture, it's so important to find a loving relationship with ssomeone because so much of the culture does not give you that. But the poor kids today, either they're too selfish to take part in a real loving relationship, or they rush into marriage and then six months later, they get divorced. They don't know what they want in a partner. They don't know who they are themselves--so how can they know who they're marrying?"

Coincidentally, recently I had a conversation about love and marriage with one of my good friends. She noticed that a lot of her friends were getting engaged or getting married. There are a good portion of people who get engaged after graduating. Apparently that's a thing, but I wasn't aware of it until she brought it up. Most of my friends on Facebook are from high school and I haven't seen many proposal statuses on my newsfeed. In any case, she had feelings about the proposals, whereas I didn't. I told her that I can't date, much less get engaged, married or have kids, until I know and love myself. I came upon that revelation on my own before reading this book, so it was nice to see that Morrie, in his infitie wisdom and 44 years of marriage, could diagnose the disease of divorce so characteristic of the baby boomers and every generation since then. I guess if there's pressure to get married and date and all that then you might get pushed into rushing the process. I'm fortunate because my parents always tell me to take my time, and even when I was little my mother would tell me not to date until I become 30. Although she said it mostly because she didn't want dating to distract from my studies and plans to become a doctor, I think she also saw that I was slow to mature and slow to adopt the normal responsibilities that come with age. Heck, it took me so long to get an undergraduate degree and at this rate I don't think I'll have real kid-bearing urges until I'm 40. At every stage of my life, I've realized that I don't want to rush the process because I'll probably just make mistakes. That's the whole purpose of this summer, too, to grow and see where I'm at, what I want and who I am.

"There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're going to have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. And the biggest one of those values, Mitch? Your belief in the importance of marriage."

"People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yoursellf. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture."

"Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it."

"Be compasionate. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would  be so much better a place."

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

"That's what we're all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing. Make peace with living."

"As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on--in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here. Death ends a life, not a relationship."

"Love is [not a negotiation]. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own."

I'm lucky that I know what feeling loved is like, and that I think I used to know what loving is like. My mother is the person I most strongly associate with true loving capabilities. She always tells us that she didn't always realize it, but her purpose on earth was to be our mother. Writing that actually brings tears to my eyes because I realize how much she's done for us in the past 25 years, and how those acts were out of pure love. It's beautiful that some people might have been put on earth to spread love and to show the rest of us what true love is. Certain individuals might be angels on earth because they have a remarkable capacity for giving without receiving, achieving a higher level of awareness, and pushing our definition of what it means to live ouside ourselves. My mother is one of those people, and it makes me feel endlessly blessed to have grown up and to continue to receive the fruits of her gift. I have hope for myself because I think I used to be capable of the same kind of love. As a kid I was affectionate and simple-mindedly focused on the good of those around me. It was only when I grew up around other kids  who were not like minded that I became cold and more calculated. Just knowing that I used to be like that makes me believe in inner goodness and tells me I can one day regain it if I try.

On his religion/spirituality: "I have not settled on one yet...However, this is too harmonious, grand, ad overwhelming a universe to believe that it's all an accident."

This quote reminded me of Corey. We spent hours upon hours debating the existence of God and the foundation of religion. Corey is not at all religious, except that he does not believe in any "higher power." He's a man of science, so he believes that everything we believe must be able to be quantified and qualified by the scientific method. He believes physics, biology and chemistry can explain the origin of the universe and that death is simply the fatal deterioration of our cells. I am neither a physics nor religion major, so it's hard for me to debate him, but I cannot completely divorce myself that, before everything, inside the smallest particles, at the end of our lvies, there is divinity. It's strange to me that a book that could impact Corey could not convince him of the possibility of "something else."

The strength and value of Morrie's lessons partly come from his proximity to death. Being able to reflect on the meaning and consequences of death was Morrie's last learning experience in a life devoted to learning, and he passed that on to Mitch, who gifted all of us by presenting that knowledge in a book. None of us know when we're going to die, or what the experience is truly like living with a fatal disease, and we can't truly know until we're at the junction ourselves. By that time, it's too late to change anything, which is why so many people die with regrets. Morrie himself recognized the futility of regret in the face of death, and he wanted to reach out and talk about the inner reconciliation process and promote inner peace. At the same time, he also taught from his experience with life. He lived a life story worth telling, full of human ups and downs, and he never squandered a moment to inject positivity into society. Very rarely do you come across individuals whose power of influence is so great that you're changed just by being in their proximity, but Morrie was one of those people. He changed the lives of his family, students, peers and neighbors while he was alive, and he continues to change readers as they hold the book in their hands. The spirit of his life, the essence of his being, continues to change by proximity. 

Rating: A+

Book 11: "And the Mountains Echoed"

The first two movies I ever saw that had a lasting impression on me were Babel (2006) and Crash (2004). Crash is an oft-debated Best Picture winner (often landing on blog lists of movies that should not have won), while Babel won only a minor Oscar for music. I was unaware of both films until they had come out on DVD, but I had heard that they were excellent and impactful. Thematically, both films are about "six degrees of separation," and how a whisper on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other. I can't claim to be a cinephile or anything, but that was the first time I had seen films that were so innovative. The way they told individual stories that told a bigger picture of tragedy and survival caused a shiver in my soul. There are entire religions and philosophical works devoted to interconnectedness. We don't often contemplate how our actions, however small, will affect those around us, yet each decision we make can change our lives or the lives of others. 

That, in a nutshell, is the format of Khaled Hosseini's latest novel. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different individual, but they're all related either directly or obliquely to Saboor and his children, Abdullah and Pari, who are the main characters in the book. The first chapter is Abdullah's story. He brings us right to the night before his father took him and his sister to Kabul. Saboor is a fantastic storyteller who tells his son the tale of a malevolent div (cross between a bird a gargoyle) who once terrorized the Afghan countryside, offering an ultimatum to one family from each village: the family had to select a child to be given to the div or the div would kill all of the children in the house. The div had visited other villages before finally landing in Shadbagh. The man in the story, Baba Ayub, had five children, so when the div selected his family, he could not choose and instead left it up to chance. When it was revealed that the family would sacrifice his favorite son, Qais, Baba Ayub was devastated. Months after the div had departed, Baba Ayub was still depressed, till one day, he decided to seek out the mythical creature and exact revenge. After trudging through the desert for days, he came upon a magnificent mansion and called out to the div who answered the door. Amused, the div promised he would fight Baba Ayub if the old man would allow him to show him something. The div led Baba Ayub through the house till they stood before a gigantic window where, down below, all the kidnapped children could be seen running and playing in a gorgeous garden. Turning to Baya Ayub, the div offered him an ultimatum: take his son back to a life of poverty and hard labor, or allow him to stay, oblivious to the outside world. Baya Ayub was torn, but he ultimately decided to leave Qais with the div. Before he left, the div gave him a special potion. The potion made him forget what he had seen and discussed with the div and he lived out the rest of his days without the pain of remembering the loss of his favorite son. 

The reason I took the time to summarize that story is because it's a reference point for the rest of the book, which consists of stories spanning time and physical divides. Everyone is connected and everyone's choices have consequences that eventually come full circle. 

My favorite parts of the book came towards the end, when the focus is less on the frenetic drama of the post-9/11 Middle East, and the story returns to Abdullah and Pari in their old age. The back end of the book was all about reunions and reconciliation. It's not difficult to follow that the book, and all of it's characters, are a more elaborate true-life version of the tale that Saboor told his children. In a way, the father tells the story then, through the chance encounters of related and unrelated individuals, becomes the story. Throughout the book, you quickly realize that it is better to assume that nothing is permanent. We don't live as long or as fulfilling a life as we dream that we will, we can never assume that what we have or who we are today will stay constant. We are all born of flesh, we eventually turn to dust, and every second of our lives brings us closer to revelations, disappointments, triumphs and contentment. It's strangely calming to find 

Favorite Quotes:
Chapter 8
"I think a lot about Thalia, sitting on the rock, looking out at the sea. I sense something deep inside me drawing me in, tugging at me like an undertow. I want to give in to it, be seized by it. I want to give up my bearings, slip out of who I am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin."
In this scene, Markos Varvaris is gazing at an old photograph from his childhood. Thalia was his childhood friend, a girl whose movie star mother abandoned her because her face was deformed. When they grew up, Markos became a plastic surgeon, while Thalia stayed in Tinos with Markos's mother. This quote is really beautiful. When I read it, I felt an instant connection to the idea of stripping off everything familiar, everything you've known, everything you've become in your life, everything you thought you were, for an ideal. Maybe the ideal is just a hope, or maybe it's a dream that could only come to fruition in an alternate reality. The ideal is powerful in the way that it provides the possibility of escape and rebirth as something new, yet there is an element of real life that keeps you grounded in resignation that the dream might never come true. For Markos, the ideal is Thalia and a life of comfort and familiarity on Tinos. After running successful practices around the world, Markos set off for Afghanistan where he developed a clinic for treating injured civilians. In the most challenging moments of his life, Markos would look at the photograph and he'd find a temporary oasis, the fantasy of a life of comfort. 

"Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly."
This quote is Markos reflecting on the superfluous nature of beauty. As a plastic surgeon, Markos saw a stark and disturbing difference between the necessary surgical work of people injured in war and the cosmetic procedures demanded from the rich. Growing up with Thalia was the most influential experience of his childhood. It motivated him to become a doctor, but he also became jaded towards beauty. Some people are born with it, some people seek to manufacture it and some people could care less, yet it is an ideal sought universally by cultures around the world. Markos recognized that internal qualities did not seem to matter as much as external appearances and that realization disgusted him. The woman with the most beautiful soul and endless strength, Thalia, had a facial deformity which would forever limit her opportunities. 

"It's a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But what really guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't  want."
In this scene, Markos is talking to his mother. He had come home to visit her and he wanted to discuss the possibility of staying with her while she fought her degenerative illness. His mother dismissed the sentiment because she knew why he left. She also wanted him to know that she saw him bound for bigger things, and that what he could accomplish through his work was more important than what he could do for her. He left partly because he wanted to escape the confines of small island life, but mostly he was trying to shake off the weight of his mother and Thalia. Both oppressed him unconsciously, in their own way: his mother was a domineering figure who he thought took up everyone else's cause but his, while Thalia was a depressing symbol of unfulfilled potential. This quote describes my current situation perfectly, and it's a good filter with which to sort through motivations. When I read the quote, I immediately thought about my own ambitions. Do I want to live in New York City because I truly love the city, or do I want to leave because I'm running away from something in Hawaii? Do I want to have a career in medicine because I want to help people/because I believe in natural healing, or because I don't want to disappoint my parents? As easy as it seems to answer those questions, it's much more complicated. The answer is concealed by years of buried and confusing direction and misdirection. One thing I find interesting retrospectively is that Markos's mother didn't say whether or not being motivated by what one doesn't want is better than being motivated by what one does want. You could argue either way about the power of intent, denial and external forces. 

"I remembered how, as a boy, I would stew over all the things Mama wouldn't do, things other mothers did...Those things were true enough. But, all these years, I'd been blind to a greater truth, which lay unacknowledged and unappreciated, buried deep beneath my grievances. It was this: that my mother would never leave me. This was her gift to me...She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than I did the sun shining on me." 
This quote really spoke to me. The relationship that Markos had with his mother is almost exactly like the one I had with mine growing up. As a kid, one of the hardest things to be is appreciative of your parents' every day efforts. I was taught and grew up in a fast-paced environment, and I always remember having (not sure if it was instilled or not) a "more, more,  more" attitude. I was, in every way, a blessed kid, but I didn't show as much appreciation as I should have. To this day, she reminds me that I was downright rude at times and suspects that I did it on purpose, which is untrue. (In actuality, I know I wasn't a calculating kid. I was rushed, maybe, and openly admitted that I didn't have time for emotional moments, but I can see now that I didn't cherish their efforts or those moments when they came through for me.) At the very core of what my parents gave me, though, was the confidence that they loved me and wouldn't give me up for the world. I suppose having two loving parents who move earth and sky might be rare nowadays, and I didn't become aware of that until I grew up, until I matured and had life experiences. While Markos volunteered in Afghanistan, I dealt with "reality" when I came to UH-Manoa. Both Markos and I realized how lucky we were when the blinders were ripped off, so to speak, and we saw the real world. This quote really spoke to me because both Markos and I took a long time to realize that what we had in our parents were much more meaningful and significant than we thought growing up. 

Markos's mother has Lou Gehrig's disease and his friend, Thalia, has held a prism up to the light for them to see. 
"Look at that, Markos!" Mama says, grinning unabashedly with delight like a schoolgirl. I have never before seen her smile this purely, this guilelessly. 
We sit, the three of us, watching the trembling little rainbows on my mother's hands, and I feel sadness and an old ache, each like a claw at my throat.
"You've turned out good. You've made me proud, Markos."
I am fifty-five years old. I have waited my entire life to hear those words. Is it too late now for this? For us? Have we squandered too much for too long, Mama and I? Part of me thinks it is better to go on as we have, to act as though we don't know how ill suited we have been for each other. Less painful that way. Perhaps better than this belated offering. This fragile, trembling little glimpse of how it could have been between us. All I will beget is regret, I tell myself, and what good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable. 
And yet when my mother says, "Isn't it beautiful, Markos?" I say to her, "It is, Mama. It is beautiful," and as something begins to break wide open inside me I reach over and take my mother's hand in mine.
There is a reason that this chapter spoke to me so deeply. It was about a mother and son, and their tenuous relationship, exacerbated by years of conflict and pressure. In the last moments of his mother's conscious life (Lou Gehrig's disease will eventually render her immobile then unconscious), she says outright what was previously unspoken. I saw a lot of myself in this chapter. It was about redemption and a rekindled maternal relationship that the son had, for so long, tried to run away from. He kept seeking greener pastures abroad, not realizing how beautiful his side of the world really was. The chapter was also about family. At the end of the day, I know I'll always have my family. Even when the world seems so big or impossible to conquer, there's always a tiny group of people who have my back. Markos wasn't a perfect son, but he came back when his mother needed him most. 

Chapter 9 "'Everything will remind me of you.'
It was in the tender, slightly panicky way he spoke these words that I knew my father was a wounded person, that his love for me was as true, vast and permanent as the sky, and that it would always bear down upon me. It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor, even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself."
In this scene, Abdullah, now an old man, has a daughter named Pari who is an aspiring art student. When it came time for Pari to decide on a college, Abdullah was diagnosed with dementia. At that pivotal moment in her life, her father says the above quote, which leads Pari to choose home to take care of her father. What spoke to me in this chapter was the verbal and nonverbal queues that parents often communicate to their kids, either intentionally or not. In so much as parents want what is best for their kids, I think they also consider what is best for themselves, especially when they're faced with a health crisis. It's hard for kids (i.e. me speaking from experience) to consider the tradeoff that ill parents face when they decide to mention that they're sick and might need help. On the one hand, I bet parents want to see their kids go out in the world, flourish and achieve their dreams, but at the same time, who else can they ask for help as their abilities are reduced? And shouldn't a sick parent tell their kids that they're sick, rather than hide the fact? My parents both have their share of health problems, and the decision to devote part of my life to helping them is not as simple as saying we're blood related. As much as I feel I owe them and want to help them, what I'd be sacrificing is my hopes/dreams/etc. but also my youth, the prime time of my life. The question of where to draw the line between pursuing my own self interests and doing for my parents what I feel I owe them is always blurry. It's also an awkward conversation to have because communicating what I feel can come across as disloyal or insensitive. Everything they say to me would automatically make me feel bad, even if they're telling me to go out and leave. It's very difficult to tell whether they actually feel that way or are saying so out of duty or a sense of obligation. I understood what Pari was going through because I can feel that crossroads coming for me too. I am already familiar with the kind of overwhelming, sometimes smothering love that she referred to. 

"Mama was elegant and talented. She read books and had many strong opinions and always she was telling them to people. But she also had very deep sadness. All of my life, she gave me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari."
In this scene, Pari (Abdullah's sister, whom he was separated from when they were children) recalled her adopted mother, Nila Wahdati, for Pari (Abdullah's daughter, named in memory of his sister). While the reader goes three fourths of the way through the book before revisiting Nila, we first get a glimpse of her sad existence through the eyes of Nabi, Pari's uncle and chauffeur for the Wahdati family in Kabul. Nabi was in love with Nila but was only able to admire her from afar because she was married to his employer, Suleiman Wahdati. As it turns out, Suleiman had always loved Nabi from afar, which Nila knew and eventually convinced her to leave her husband for Paris. Because of her sham marriage, tumultuous childhood and fertility problems, Nila had a lot of emotional issues and eventually drank herself to death. Of all the characters in the book, Nila felt the most distinct to me. She had her own personality and identity that didn't depend on any one other character. Everyone she lived or interacted with were, as Nabi realized, only temporarily part of her orbit. It was because of her apparent selfishness that she left devastation in her wake, yet she was morally complicated, empty and lonely. Because of the trauma of her childhood and early adulthood, Nila took the route of self-harm and she was unable to escape the fate bestowed upon her by others. It struck a chord with me that Nila's greatest joy--the adoption of her daughter, Pari--was also a reminder of her greatest pain, being unable to conceive. As her issues escalated, Nila turned her daughter into a landfill for her emotional overrun. It's one thing to have a parent who is also your best friend, and it's another to have a best friend who happens to be your parent. I admire parents who can be best friends with their kids, but I frown upon parents who play the best friend role first (i.e. Dina and Lindsay Lohan). Emotional and mental damage seems inevitable to me when parents rely on their kids to heal or serve purposes that only an adult friend or spouse can. No kid should have to do that because of the burden it imposes. In the case of Nila, however, I felt her pain more than I felt Pari's. Pari was conflicted but she saw the pain in her adopted mother and felt empathy. Nila, in all her selfishness, was manipulative of Pari in the latter years of her life, but Pari couldn't turn away, even though she knew what was happening. 

Pari 1 (Abdullah's sister): "Maybe you should think about finding professional help, no?"
Pari 2 (Abdullah's daughter): "I know, but not yet. I want to take care of him as long as I can." 
Pari 1: "I understand that."
Pari 2 (thinking): I am not sure she does. I don't tell her the other reason. I can barely admit to myself. Namely, how afraid I am to be free despite my frequent desire for it. Afraid of what will happen to me, what I will do with myself, when Baba is gone. All my life, I have lived like an aquarium fish in the safety of a glass tank,  behind a barrier as impenetrable as it has been transparent. I have been free to observe the glimmering world on the other side, to picture myself in it, if I like. But I have always been contained, hemmed in, by the hard, unyielding confines of the existence that Baba has constructed for me, at first knowingly, when I was young, and now guilelessly, now that he is fading day by day. I think I have grown accustomed to the glass and am terrified that when it breaks, when I am alone, I will spill out into the wide open unknown and flop around, helpless, lost, gasping for breath. The truth I rarely admit to is, I have always needed the weight of Baba on my back."
This quote is an interesting observation about human interdependency and the intricacies of the parent-offspring bond. When we think about our life plans, it's always easier to achieve our goals if we don't have others to take care of. Biologically, however, something about attachment links us to our parents/parental figures or other members of society. We take care of each other, and time that could be devoted to furthering our own wellbeing or that of our genes is spent assisting the old, diseased or disabled, or someone unrelated at all. It's also interesting to think about the psychological attachments we create when we begin to incorporate caring for others in our daily routines and as part of our identities. Eventually, they become part of us and maybe we can't picture ourselves without them, even when our roles are no longer supplementary care and it starts inhibiting other ambitions. I hesitate when making the comparison, but the reliance of a sick parent on their child (something I can relate to), is almost like a drug dependency for the child. The child may want to leave, but can't leave the parent to suffer, while the parent has a duty to feign independence. 

"Je pouvais oublier. I still had the luxury of forgetting. He did not."
How ironic this quote was. While Abdullah was haunted his whole life by the separation from his sister, Pari was the one who, though unable to remember much from her childhood with her brother, in the end, came face to face with the truth and would have to die with it on her mind. In a way, brother and sister wrote the beginning and ending of the book through their experiences. They were more than just close blood relatives, they were two halves of the same saga. 

Rating: A

Book 14: "Eating Animals"

Vegetarianism is the only way to eat, according to Jonathan Safran Foer.

Three years ago, I heard about an Oscar buzz-worthy movie called "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." It was six months from the release date, yet the movie trailer moved me to tears each of the fifty times I replayed it. If you haven't seen it, the movie stars big names Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow and Jeopardy wizz kid Thomas Horn. Young Mr. Horn plays Oskar Schell, an eleven year old who's father (played by Hanks) dies on September 11th in the World Trade Center. Following 9-11, Oskar suddenly finds a mysterious key he believes once belonged to his father, and what unfolds over the course of the next hour and a half is the journey he embarks on. With the help of a speechless man, The Renter (played by von Sydow), Oskar runs through Manhattan in the desperate hope that the key will unlock something significant. I found the movie to be intensely emotional and impossible to leave with dry eyes. I cheered for the movie throughout Oscar season, and although it failed to win Best PIcture, it is a movie I will cherish nonetheless. 

The reason I mentioned the movie is because it is, like so many great movies, based on a novel. The author of the novel is Jonathan Safran Foer, who happened to turn around a few years later and write something completely different: Eating Animals. As you might be able to guess, the two books have nothing contextually in common, yet both are about real-life tragedy. Neither brand of tragedy need embelishing but both focus on the crisis of a specific individual, in ELIC it was Oskar while in Eating Animals it was Safran Foer himself. Both works will affect people to varying degrees, depending on proximity and capacity for empathy and sympathy. 

Eating animals is so commonplace, yet it is always controversial. As demonstrated by MIchael Pollan, Safran Foer and countless other authors writing about food ethics, we love to debate and offer our perspectives on the way we procure food stuffs and the things we choose to ingest. Anyone who eats (aka everyone) can participate in the great global debate, whether or not one has any knowledge of where our food comes, how it is made, why we eat it, etc. Unlike hot button issues like abortion or universal health care, there are unlimited factions in food philosophy, devoted to varying degrees of herbivory, omnivory, carnivory, and who knows what other -vorys there are. Who would ever think that eating would become a study in itself? 

At first glance, I was worried that Eating Animals would be redundant with what I read in any of Michael Pollan's books. In Eating Animals, Safran Foer wastes no time in telling the reader that it is not a case for the ethical treatment of animals, it is a case for outright vegetarianism. So there was one difference right off the bat. Another difference was that Safran Foer did not offer much by way of historical context for our eating habits, instead focusing on the here and now: the cruelties inflicted upon industrially farmed animals and a system necessitated by the world's unhealthy obsession with meat. There was no black and white "gray" area, to Safran Foer, even omnivory is a compromise and an acceptance that what is cannot be changed. In many ways, reading this book is like ripping a bandaid off of a fresh cut and pouring alcohol on the wound. As cruel as an approach that may seem, it does a lot to spare us from the moral reasoning and internal strife we might have had to face if the choice were left up to us. 

Amid all of the carnage, and in defense of this post, I felt slightly elevated in mindset. For one, I used to be a vegetarian, as you'd know if you read one of my earlier Pollan posts. I was a vegetarian for 14 years of my life, so I'm well aware of the sacrifices involved in participating in an "alternative" diet. As a vegetarian, you're always seen as the one whom extra consideration must be given at parties, family dinners, restaurant choices and grocery shopping. For willing and eager meat eaters, the vegetarian is the splinter in their conscience-free consumption, a subtle but nagging reminder of what happens when food becomes overly thoughtful. Surprisingly and refreshingly, Safran Foer points out that vegetarians would not be a bother if everyone were vegetarian, that cooking for vegetarians is a lot less complicated than cooking for omnivores across multiple kingdoms, and that being vegetarian is not only just as, if not more, healthful than eating a varying diet. Safran Foer is the spokesperson hero for vegetarians everywhere, a group that always has to defend itself, whether casually ("I can always eat a salad...") or confrontationally (regurgitating the answer to "Why are you a vegetarian?"). Ominvores never need to defend themselves, but maybe this book is the way Safran Foer has simultaneously empowered vegetarians and put omnivores on the defensive. 

When an author is this passionate about a subject, you have to expect that some toes may be stepped on. Safran Foer goes for the juggular and spares no one in eviscerating the meat industry and consumers who put their money where their forks are. Very few people are innocent, and in fact, anyone who raises animals for slaughter and anyone who eats animal products is buying in to a system built on ignorance and cruelty. If you've seen "Food, Inc." you know what to expect from this book, yet some of the passages are even more vivid than any illustrated cartoon slaughter line can depict. There is plenty of blood, guts, crying, screaming, torture, body parts and fear, not to mention crude, primal, animalistic human behavior. Perhaps worst of all is the prevalence of prolonged suffering, physical deformities and emotional manipulation of animals from their birth to death. In many ways it is harder to defend omnivory than it is to advocate for pure vegetarianism, yet how many of us would be willing to give up our culture of consumption even with a little education of what goes on behind factory walls? That's why I credit Safran Foer for his approach. Little sensationalism is needed to expose and communicate what we've chosen and are encouraged to ignore. You can't read this book and feel absolutely nothing. It's a wake up call that you, as a reader, participate in just by continuing to the end without quitting. 

Through it all, did it compel me to become a vegetarian? No, I'm pretty sure it did not. The dinner I had the night I finished the book most likely included chicken, and I had a kobe beef burger last night. But it wasn't as though I read the book, closed it and put it and its contents back on the shelf. I feel guilty eating meat, and I've winced ordering and enjoying it because I can't with good conscience ignore what I know. Yet, having read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I'm still fairly confident that there's a happy medium between being a meat-eating glutton and not eating it at all. For one, although eating "organic" or "free range" is only marginally better, I can try to eat local meat as often as possible. In addition, I've changed my diet, anyway. I try to stick to the rule that the portion of meat at any meal should not be any larger than my palm, and that red meat should only be consumed twice a week. Overall, I've been eating less meat, more greens and smaller portions and I feel (and see) changes in the way my body looks already. If I eat less meat every week, in my mind, that many less chickens/cows/pigs can be slaughtered in the future because I'm putting my money where my fork is. I'm not delusional enough to think that eating less chicken will directlly impact the meat industry, but it's a contribution to a long-term habit that will hopefully leave me healthier and the world a slightly better place.

Favorite Quotes:

"We could retell our stories and make them better, more representative or aspirational. Or we could choose to tell different stories. The world itself had another chance."

"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save."

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

"Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list."

"More than any set of practices, factory farming is a mind-set: reduce production costs to the absolute minimum and systematically ignore or "externalize" such costs as environmental degradation, human disease, and animal suffering."

"Shame is the work of memory against forgetting. Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely--yet not entirely--forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification."

"If we wish to disavow a part of our nature, we call it our "animal nature." We then repress or conceal that nature, and yet, as Kafka knew better than most, we sometimes wake up and find ourselves, still, only animals."

"War is waged over the matter of pity. This war is probably ageless but...it is passing thorugh a critical phase. We are passing through that phase, and it passes through us. To think the war we find ourselves waging is not only a duty, a responsibility, an obligation, it is also a necessity, a constraint that, like it or not, directly or indirectly, no one can escape...The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it."

Suffering: "The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at."

"That really changed me, when I realized taht an excruciating life is worse than an excruciating death."

"When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than an animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. I'm not speculating. This is our reality."

"Killing an animal oneself is more often than not a way to forget the problem while pretending to remember. This is perhaps more harmful than ignorance. It's always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep."

"People focus on that last second of death. I want them to focus on the entire life of the animal. If I had to choose between knowing that my throat was going to be slit at the end, which might last three minutes, but I've had to live for six weeks in pain, I'd probably ask for that slit throat six weeks earlier. People only see the killing...How much suffering is acceptable? That's what's at the bottom of all of this, and what each person has to ask himself. How much suffering will you tolerate for your food?"

"Remembering and forgetting are part of the same mental process. To write down one detail of an event is to not write down another...To remember one thing is to let another slip from rememberance...There is ethical as well as violent forgetting. We can't hold on to everything we've known so far. So the question is not whether we forget but what, or whom, we forget--not whether our diets change, but how."

"Vegetarians are at best kindly but unrealistic. At worst they are delusional sentimentalists."

"The idea of a just farm system rooted in the best traditions of animal welfare and the idea of a vegetarian farm system rooted in an animal rights ethic are both strategies for reducing (never eliminating) the violence inherent in being alive, They aren't just opposing values, as is often portrayed. They represent different ways of getting a job done that both agree needs doing. They reflect different intuitions about human nature, but they both appeal to compassion and prudence."

"The ethical relationship of farmers to farm animals is unique. The farmer must raise a living creature that is destined to an endpoint of slaughter for food, or culling and death after a lifetime of production, without becoming emotionally attached or, conversely, without becoming cynical about the animal's need for a decent life while the animal is alive. The farmer must somehow raise an animal as a commercial endeavor without regarding the animal as a mere commodity."

"This is not in the end a complicated position. Nor is it a veiled argument for vegetarianism. It is an argument for vegetarianism, but it's also an argument for another, wiser animal agriculture and more honorable omnivory."

"We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generation that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the  moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?"

"Toward the end of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes, 'I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian...Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality tha can be its own form of hubris.' He's right that emotional responses can lead us to an arrogant disconnect. But is the person who makes an effort to at on the dream of innocence really the one to be pitied? And who, in this case, is denying reality?"

"Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity. For some, that irrationality leads to a kind of resignation. Food choices are likened to fashion choices or lifestyle preferences--they do not respond to judgments about how we should live. And I would agree that the messiness of food, the almost infinite meanings it proliferates, does make the question of eating--and eating animals especially--surprisingly fraught. Activists I spoke with were endlessly puzzled and frustrated by the disconnect between clear thinking and people's food choices. I sympathize, but I also wonder if it is precisely the irrationality of food that holds the most promise."

Rating: A

Book 10: "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?"

If there's one book from The Summer of Reid reading list that you decide to read, make it Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). Once you read the book, you'll never look at these pictures the same way again. Hint: the dress she's wearing in the first picture has a backstory.

How I Discovered Mindy Kaling:

I've always loved the American version of The Office. The Office introduced Steve Carell, as well as Ed Helms, BJ Novak, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Rashida Jones, Ellie Kemper, and more(!) to mass audiences and, arguably, launched their careers, The show also served as the American inspiration for other hits, such as Modern Family, Parks and Recreations, which make use of the single-camera, mockumentary style of filming. Entire volumes could be dedicated to the ways in which The Office changed pop culture and the boosted the careers of its actors.

After the initial novelty of the show ran its course, casual viewers seemed to abandon the show. Although the show peaked in the ratings and viewership around its 3rd season, and Carell departed during the 6th season, the show continued for 2 more years and just wrapped up it's 9th and final season this past May. I stuck with The Office all the way through to the end, and tearfully wept as the documentary crews turned off their cameras for good. You could just tell, as the cast lounged around their workspace in the final moments of the show, that the actors knew how important the show was not only to TV, but to their lives, and it felt like the most genuine moment I've witnessed on a show. 

Before she was a beloved novelist, Mindy Kaling was a writer-actor for The Office, which premiered midseason with only 6 episodes that ran in the spring of 2005. Her supporting role as Kelly Kapoor, the vapid, shallow customer service representative was never really a main player in the show. Most times she had less than 3 lines per episode, but they were always memorable. She picked up additional duties as a producer and director of the show in latter seasons, before eventually leaving the show after season 8 to pursue her own project, a television show called The Mindy Project, 

If you don't watch The Mindy Project on Fox, I suggest you start. The first episode was offered for free on iTunes last summer, so I decided to check it out. It was WELL worth the $0 I paid for it, and it effectively got my hopes up for the fall season. The opening scene of the pilot was gloriously executed, and her confrontation with a Barbie doll at the bottom of a pool is one of the funniest moments I have ever witnessed on network television. As soon as the credits rolled, I hurriedly texted all my friends, telling them to watch Mindy Kaling's new show. 

Barbie lectures Mindy in the premiere of The Mindy Project. One of my good friends gave me the book and I inserted this Post-It on the inside cover. 

I wasn't thrilled with the second or third episodes of the show. Under pressure from my mother, I decided to stop watching. (One thing I should say is that I am an consumer viewer of TV. I started the 2012-2013 with 30 shows on my Hulu favorites list. It's a wonder that I ever get anything done.) Even though I had stopped watching the show, I continued to track its ratings (which at one point indicated that the show would be canceled) and read related news (drama: firing of cast members, hiring of new cast members, downgrading of series regulars!). Long after the show had been picked up for 2 additional episodes (24 in total), and then eventually renewed for the 2013-2014 season, I decided to have a Mindy marathon. My co-worker, Sabrina, is in love with Mindy and the show, so she encouraged me to give it another chance. Since the spring finales had aired and there wasn't an interesting show in sight, I queued the show and sat down to watch. The show improved markedly after the second and third episodes, and it began to establish it's strengths and weaknesses. Mindy came to identify itself as an ensemble comedy, rather than one that focused solely on Mindy, adding variation and flexibility to the plot in the process. Although the ratings and viewership for the show were never fantastic, I think the show matured and showed a positive learning curve by its finale. 

The Book: 

Meanwhile, throughout the whole ordeal, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? sat on my bookshelf. One of my friends had given it to me after her trip to NYC, but I was doubtful that the book was a must-read. After all, how could someone who is neither a big star, nor old or deceased, have anything to contribute to my impression of the world? Also, I had just finished reading Tina Fey's book, Bossypants, and I didn't think anyone could dethrone her as the queen of funny autobiographies. Two days ago, I pulled the book off the shelf and decided that if I didn't "just do it" now, I wouldn't ever get around to it. 

As soon as I started reading it, I fell in love with Mindy Kaling. She's the Tina Fey of my generation, but with more pop culture and fashion awareness and less mom-ness. Where Tina deadpans like no other, and humbly incorporates self-deprecation into her comedy, Mindy is refreshingly self-conscious and realistic, yet she is still able to maintain the identity and personality of Gen Y. She is unapologetic about who she is, and she speaks frankly on a variety of topics, including growing up with two brothers, dating, struggling after college and the stereotypes she faces as a plump Indian in Hollywood. Every chapter is comedy gold, and there wasn't a single letdown beginning to end. 

I think it's much easier to write sad stories than it is to write funny ones, so I can only admire Mindy more for her efforts here. She taught me that everyone's life can be funny and interesting if depicted in the right way. For Mindy, the "right way" is her normal voice. The way she wrote the book is the way she delivered lines on The Office and more or less the character she plays on her show. What she writes and who she is on TV also happens to be who she is in real life, and I think that kind of genuine honesty is what makes comedians most successful. (Compared to actors such as, say, Will Ferrell, whose characters are so outlandishly contrived that they're only funny because they're so un-real.)

What Tina and Mindy have in common is their adherence to reality. Neither women try to sugarcoat real life, or fabricate sappy endings for the sake of escapism. I can see how that might be a formula for success among certain audiences, but it's also a relegation to niche viewing/reading. Just as 30 Rock was never a mainstream hit, perhaps The Mindy Project will never garner the attention it deserves, yet for those viewers who "get" Tina or Mindy, it's an invaluable display of what it means to grow into one's own. 

I highly recommend this book. While you're reading it, you'll realize that Mindy is a lot like us, and in the ways that she isn't, she's inevitably going to remind you of someone who is.

Rating: A+

Book 9: "The End of Your Life Book Club"

I'll just admit it now: I sobbed at the end of this book.

I'm typing this post a mere 5 minutes after getting up to discard the wet pile of napkins I accumulated. There's an open tray of Belgian Butter Waffle Cookies and an open jar of Speculoos Cookie Butter, both from Trader Joe's, lying near Will Schwalbe's New York Times Bestselling work, The End of Your Life Book Club. The book is filled with tabs marking passages I liked and moments I identified with. There are a thousand thoughts zipping through my head right now as I think about where to begin, what to say, how to identify where my feelings are coming from. It's 2:45AM and I can't go to sleep without roundly giving this book an A-. 

An A-, say what? How is it that a book so deeply affecting could merit deductions? If I could judge the book separately on it's content versus emotional gravity, it would earn a B for the former and an A+ for the latter. As I read the last few pages, simultaneously aware that there was no surprise ending and willing myself to jump in and let Mr. Schwalbe tell his story, I realized that I was crying not because the world lost his mother, Mary Ann, but because I was imagining the loss of my own mother.  I was doing what I've been doing ever since I can remember: I was projecting my parents' death onto the present and exposing my greatest fear.

Now that I'm 24, I don't really have dreams or nightmares. No matter how close to bedtime I eat, or how bad or good the day had been, I'm always able to sleep through the night. That wasn't always the case. For a longest time, I kept having nightmares when I was younger. They weren't necessarily about being chased by a killer, or seeing myself die, they--the ones I woke up crying to--were always about my parents, especially my mother dying. I'd always wake up mid-dream and run to my parents' bedroom, crying to my mother. She would always wake up and listen to the dream and, as we laid there, she would hug me and tell me it was all just a dream. I'd fall asleep and spend the rest of the night by her side. As I got older and the dreams were less frequent, I tried to figure out the meanings behind the nightmares. I had heard about Freud, so for awhile I was worried that those dreams were a manifestation of some dark and twisted subconscious desire I had to see my parents gone. But that's not who I am at all. If anything, those dreams were the work of some evil force putting the worst possible scenes in my head in the time I was most vulnerable--asleep. Losing my parents was unfathomable then, and only recently have thoughts about their mortality begun to pop up every now and then. 

Looking back, I don't think I ever gave much thought to what emotional turmoil death really involves. My parents have always been young and vibrant in my mind, even when they got injured or sick I always knew they'd bounce back in no time and our family could continue to live the same way we always have. It's not a kid's job to have to worry about their parents' mortality, and I certainly did not grow up with those worries. Even as recently as a few months ago, I was blithely unconcerned. Our family has always been a fairly tight foursome and I couldn't imagine the relationships and roles we play changing. 

The turning point was when my dad turned 60 in May. We went to Las Vegas for a week, and I was surprised that a lot had changed, most of all my dad. He used to love Las Vegas. He went with his friends growing up, and for awhile he accompanied my grandparents on their quarterly trips. Before he had asked us if we wanted to go, I didn't give "60" much thought. I thought we'd approach his birthday like any other year (minimal presents, nice dinner, maybe give him a new family photo for his office). He, apparently, saw 60 as a milestone, and because he normally never ever asks for anything, we said yes. Even when we were there, it didn't hit me just how much that trip meant to him, despite the fact that he kept thanking us. It's funny how, once someone points out the elephant in the room, all you can think about from that point on is the elephant. When I realized how much being 60 meant for him, symbolically, physically or otherwise, I began to see other signs of change in his life. How he has continued to give work 110% of his effort, even as guys his age have long since retired. How he approaches the gym with such conviction, trying to lose weight and stay healthy. How he take extra time to thank us for small gestures like his birthday and Father's Day this past week. How he never refuses extra family duties, such as booking flights or looking into alternative eye treatments for my mom. He has always supported us financially, yet he asks for so little. I haven't had a serious talk with him about what he's going through at this time in his life, but it resembles grace to me. The way he's spent 30 years proving to my mom that he's grown up. The way he continues to chug on as though he's still the father of two teenagers. If anything, my dad seems determined to be indefatigable. I think that comes from a place of peace and purity, not obligation. (Dammit I'm crying again.) 

Whether someone gets to that point out of wisdom and years of living, or because they wake up realize they're 60, I think we all eventually confront the idea of dying. Not the abstract idea we have to discuss in philosophy, but the physical death, maybe the realization that you only have a few decades to live if you can make it to life expectancy standards. Death is a very powerful agent in our lives. We all know it will happen, but we don't know when, how, where, etc. For most of our lives we go about our daily routines without considering entropy and randomness of disaster. We don't always make the most of every moment, and we probably spend a lot of time engaging in time-wasting activities, relationships, multi-tasking, etc. The sad part about it is that people commonly regret those moments when they're on the cusp of death. And why shouldn't they? It seems perfectly natural to lament the years, days, hours, seconds, even, spent on the "wrong" path. We live in the present and our lives are the cumulative result of everything that has happened in the past, yet we wish we could isolate regrettable moments and replace them with heroism, action or inaction. In the end, the ultimate choice is whether we die with regret on our breath, or look ahead to the promise of what's in store. 

Then there's the issue of what it's like to lose a loved one, which is the realm I've been floating around my entire life. The most immediate relative I know who has died is my grandpa, 7 years ago. My grandpa was a silent man, very stoic and unwavering. Even though my brother and I would go over to my grandparents' house frequently on weekends while my parents went out, most of the interaction was with my grandma who would cook for us and bring us blankets. My grandpa was always either on the reclining sofa or sitting on the floor surrounded my newspaper clippings Altogether, I didn't know much about him, so when he died, none of that phased me. Simultaneously, I could cry on a dime just thinking about the worst case scenarios happening to my parents. Perhaps I had a shallow connection to death--that grief was directly related to how well I knew a person. 

If you think about it, death is all around us (this is actually an idea pulled from Michael Pollan's book Cooked). We eat dead plants, animals, fungi, etc., dead stuff powers our cars and electricity, and every participant in natural selection is familiar with the idea that sometimes it is necessary to eliminate a competitor to perpetuate your genes. Death is a necessary part of the life cycle. If it's distilled down to scientific terms then all you have to look forward to is biodegrading and joining the carbon cycle. But if you allow philosophy and religion into the picture, death becomes more than a necessity, it becomes a burden, a major marker in the lives of those around the deceased, a threat and a motivator. In a way, death is a reason and means for living. 

Since we all have death in common, we can all also appreciate Mr. Schwalbe's book about books and the impact they have. There is no great mystery--it's a given that the author's mother is going to die of pancreatic cancer, so it's just a matter of when. By reading and sharing books, the author and his mother are able to distract from and confront her illness and the end of her life. The real adventure, I came to find out, is not the ways in which cancer and cancer treatment can ravage one's body, but how books can transform relationships, how great works can teach you lessons and how you can find relevance in the experiences of others through books. 

It was almost two years from Mary Ann's diagnosis to her death, which certainly defied the "up to six months" rule of thumb for patients in stage 4. Yet the author never went to great lengths to portray his mother as a stereotypical cancer fighter. Yes, she lived a great deal longer than was expected given her diagnosis, and yes she continued to work up until her death, but she never did advocate for cancer research funding or actually start an organization to raise awareness for early detection. For someone of her status in the academic and philanthropic communities, she could have done a lot more to help aid workers. Perhaps it's a little nitpicky to point out that she chose refugees causes over cancer awareness. 

What bothered me most about the book was that, of all the positive outcomes she could have wished and prayed for in the world before she died, she chose a) the safe return of her friend, journalist David Rohde who had been captured in Afghanistan and b) for Obama to win the 2008 presidential election. Both things came true, and Mary Ann was even around to see the Obamacare Bill introduced in Washington. (From the start of her treatment all the way till the end, she was an outspoken supporter of socialized healthcare. She used her illness as a launching point to stir emotions.) Mary Ann was, like much of America in 2008, obsessed with Obama. Like every "progressive Democrat" all she could talk about leading up to the election was how awesome he was and how important the election was. Then, when he got elected, her focus turned with his to nationalizing the healthcare system. Despite the ongoing economic woes, both Obama and Mary Ann were obsessed with passing the bill. 

What's most disturbing about who Mary Ann was is that she was active in refugee and women's rights causes, yet her focus was on other countries, rather than our own. Yes, it is admirable that she chose to spend so much time helping Middle Eastern school children or refugees from Burma, but why didn't she also try to support American causes as well? Starvation exists here and it's much more prevalent than most people could imagine, but, like every celebrity (Angelina Jolie comes to mind), everything is about directing money to foreign countries, despite the suffering that happens in our own communities.  And not once did I hear mention that Mary Ann wanted to bring down the very dictatorships oppressing the people she kept helping. Mary Ann ended up, in my mind, as such a contradiction. Rather than focus on preventative care or cancer screening, her focus was on palliative care. Rather than speak about a strong US foreign policy stance, she took foreign aid missions. It was almost like she had a Mother Teresa complex where she wanted to be the one seen saving the children, but did not do so for the "bigger picture." 

What was even more uncomfortable for me was the prosperity and power that the Schwalbe family possessed. Mary Ann was portrayed as having connections, and in some ways it seemed her job was to socialize and get in everyone else's business. Everyone was a cause that had to be helped. What seems like a generosity of spirit really seemed to me like an obsession with ethnic people and minority groups. Knowing that education is so important in the future of the US as a global leader, Mary Ann instead used her resources and connections to acquire scholarships for foreigners, scholarships which, I think, should have gone to underprivileged American students. The family as a whole wielded a fair amount of social power, and they leveraged their connections to create opportunities to support charities of their choice. Essentially, they weren't starting from nothing, and it seemed they had no shortage of money or resources to satisfy all of their wants (trips to London, Florida, rounds and rounds of chemotherapy, not to mention living in Manhattan). This wasn't a story about a family who had very little and defied the odds, it was the story of a well-off family who saw it as their life's duty to help the less fortunate, provided they were from foreign countries. 

To return to my feelings at the end of the book, I realized that I wasn't crying for Will or his mother, but because I thought about my own mother dying. (Honestly, I was getting tired of Mary Ann's never-ending soirees, award ceremonies and fundraisers, and I kept checking to see how many more pages I had to go before the ending of the book where she, you know.) There were parts of the book that reminded me of lessons my mother taught me, or things she would say growing up. The only connection I had with Will and his mother was that, like me and my mother, they were mother-and-son. As Mary Ann endured treatment after treatment and setback after setback, I imagined what it would be like to have to go through that with my own mother. Of course, in the end, I could not stop crying because I imagined what it would be like at her end. So, do I think that Schwalbe is a "good" author? I'm not sure. He told the story of his mother, but the attachment I have to this book is purely based on my own real-life feelings and my tendency to project. He wrapped up the story concisely and without the drama portrayed in cinema, but the rest of the book was only ho-hum. Sure, he and his mother read a lot of great books (some of which I intend to pick up), and I loved that it was about the power of books, but I can't look past the idiosyncrasies and annoying Obama-Obama-Obama speeches.

Final Rating: B+