"Our Habitual Path"

If I hadn’t stopped scrolling, would not have discovered ‘Olive Ketteridge’; character in Elizabeth Strout’s eponymous book.  Am late to the party; it won the Pulitzer 2009.  Doubt I would have ‘got’ it back then as was still working and in spiral of cortisol, fatigue and shopping.  Would have found it unbearable.  Didn’t have the psychological wherewithal to cope with a book about getting old, the clarity and messiness of late-life’s joys, fears and griefs.  Para-phrasing ‘Bezukov’, am starting to appreciate, “sufferings are [not] misfortunes” (Tolstoy, 1889). 

I love Olive.  The book format is inter-linked short stories about Olive and the people in her town.  It is beautifully written, poignant, funny, shocking and satisfying.  Although, not so dangerous a place as the villages Agatha Christie created, Olive’s town suffers more than its fair share of human tragedy.  No poignancy without them, those “lives of quiet desperation” (Thoreau, 1854).  (Am stopping these in-text citings, they use too many words and piss me off).   

‘Olive Ketteridge’ is unputdownable, somewhere between, ‘there but by the grace of God’ and mirrors.  Olive’s realisation that her son just doesn’t like her, for instance.  People’s behaviour around a sick loved-one, fuelled by worry, fear and shock.  Seeing people, understanding them, even the ones who bring every conversation around to themselves.  How human it all is.  The death of an old love. 

A man I knew died.  His father’s face came into my mind’s eye, early January.  When I googled, found both obituaries.  His father had died that January; he had died five years before.  I didn’t love him.  His parents thought I was the Hope that would save him from himself.  I didn’t want the burden of their failings and chose my own life instead.  Foreseeing sufferings, you simply have to choose your own life instead. 

Thoreau. HD.  1854. ‘Walden’ Ch 1 ‘Economy’ "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation".

Tolstoy, L.  1865 transl.1889. ‘War and Peace’ Book 15, Ch 17. “They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.”