The rain is over and there's a welcome coolness in the air. The deck is littered and slick with wet, fallen leaves and the trees are still bent downward, glistening with left over moisture, shivering ever so slightly in the early evening breeze. Everyone I know is ready for a change of season, ready to put the steamy summer behind them and move on. Fall beckons like a dogeared old novel - I remember how much I loved it but can't quite recall the ending and I'm anxious to start re-reading. I have a soft spot for British-written fiction, epic tales of families recounted over decades and told in different voices from alternating viewpoints. One in particular, "Wheel of Fortune" by Susan Howatch is high on my list of favorites and I re-read yearly - for it's elegant dialogue, it's vivid character portrayals, it's plot and sub plots - but mostly because it reminds me how complex we are and how we filter our feelings and actions through our own experiences. We make our own heroes and villains and build our own dramas - what you see may be exactly what I see, and yet not. We interpret and translate according to our own inner selves and we write our own stories. Your tragedy may be my celebration. Your heartbreak may be my salvation. One man's trash, so they say, is another man's treasure. You hear an innocent question, I hear a veiled criticism. You see a smile, I see a setup. Don't grow up, I read somewhere, It's a trap.
This is the thing that most fascinates me about human behavior and the workings of our sometimes fractured minds. I have come to expect a hidden agenda in the mechanism and I often find myself looking for a tell, a clue of some kind, as if kindness comes with a catch or a well intentioned remark has some concealed meaning. A holdover of childhood, I tell myself, a remembrance from a failed or betrayed marrriage, a gift from a suspicious and distrusting mind. Sometimes people are exactly what appear to be, no more and no less and certainly not behind the scenes plotters and anarchists.
And yet.
It runs like a river, this search for what I imagine to be truth. When I see others on the same journey, others with the same telltale expression, I think how glad I am to have gotten past all that suspicious nonsense and arrived at a place of confidence and certainty and acceptance and how sad for those who have not.
And yet.
It may be a battle that will never be fully won or lost, only a continuing fight and opportunity to live and learn.
I hear hoofbeats and make myself think horse. But as unlikely as it may be, it could be a zebra. Or in some cases, even a unicorn.
And yet.
Horses, zebras or unicorns. Susan Howatch's novel suggests that we're all prisoners on the wheel, destinies preset and spinning through life without any real choices. Maybe so, but I prefer to think we all see things through the filters we design for ourselves. The real trick is seeing through our own illusions.
This is the thing that most fascinates me about human behavior and the workings of our sometimes fractured minds. I have come to expect a hidden agenda in the mechanism and I often find myself looking for a tell, a clue of some kind, as if kindness comes with a catch or a well intentioned remark has some concealed meaning. A holdover of childhood, I tell myself, a remembrance from a failed or betrayed marrriage, a gift from a suspicious and distrusting mind. Sometimes people are exactly what appear to be, no more and no less and certainly not behind the scenes plotters and anarchists.
And yet.
It runs like a river, this search for what I imagine to be truth. When I see others on the same journey, others with the same telltale expression, I think how glad I am to have gotten past all that suspicious nonsense and arrived at a place of confidence and certainty and acceptance and how sad for those who have not.
And yet.
It may be a battle that will never be fully won or lost, only a continuing fight and opportunity to live and learn.
I hear hoofbeats and make myself think horse. But as unlikely as it may be, it could be a zebra. Or in some cases, even a unicorn.
And yet.
Horses, zebras or unicorns. Susan Howatch's novel suggests that we're all prisoners on the wheel, destinies preset and spinning through life without any real choices. Maybe so, but I prefer to think we all see things through the filters we design for ourselves. The real trick is seeing through our own illusions.
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