We aren’t victims of our circumstances. We can make a choice about our emotions. I didn’t say
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
So wrote Charles Dickens in the opening paragraph of his classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. If you didn’t know the source, you’ve probably heard that line quoted somewhere. Dickens described the powerful contrasts between despair and hope, good and evil, chaos and peace. He was alluding to an actual context, the radical opposites and similarities between London and Paris during the French Revolution.
Another Dickens’ novel, Hard Times, was required reading in my Western Civilization class as an undergraduate. Having purchased it at the university book store, I made my way to the library, clutching the book in my hands, glancing at the cover, anticipating the read, as I made my way across campus. Finding a secluded cubicle, I opened the book to the first page, where I was introduced to the bland schoolmaster in the “plain, bare, monotonous school-room.”
“Now, what I want is, Facts,” said the schoolmaster. “Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.” Dickens had captured me with his words.
We are going through some hard times ourselves, and in the midst of it, there are those “fact people,” who, disregarding the angst of people caught in life’s cross hairs, seem only to care about the bottom line. It’s also a time of contrasts, striking us sometimes with feelings of sympathy, sometimes with anger, sometimes with apathy, and sometimes with all those at once. It is in many ways, “the best of times, the worst of times.”
But the pages of those two Dickens’ novels reminds me that we are not the first generation of people to be enmeshed with conflicted feelings. Our contrasts may in fact appear slight when compared to other seasons of life in other civilizations at different times. That is not to make light of the despair and tribulation many are experiencing today. But it can give us a larger perspective on ourselves in context.
Reading can do that for you. As Anna Quindlen said, “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
I suppose my love affair with books began after my brother, my closest childhood companion, and I were in a car wreck. I survived, he didn’t. So, my mother, knowing I needed something to occupy my time without him, would read to me during the day, and at night as well, since I had trouble sleeping after his death. It wasn’t long until I was off and reading on my own. Books became my friends.
I could cozy up to Jack London’s Call of the Wild, on a cold winter’s night, or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe on a hot, summer’s day. Books helped fill the gap when I would have been playing with Dougie, and relieved, but didn’t cure, the anxiety that plagued me with insomnia.
Without books, then as a child and subsequently through my teenage and adult years, I would have been more likely to have thought I was the only one on earth to know fear, guilt, and remorse. But having been transported to other people’s lives in different times and places, I came to understand I was quite privileged. That recognition helped me then, as it does now, at least with a desire to better understand the plight of victims today—those who are have been attacked by disease or by other people, those who have been sidelined by oppression or by lack.
I don’t pretend to walk in another’s shoes, but reading about others who are similar to them, at least moves me to tie my shoe laces a little tighter, step more quickly toward others, and when possible, walk a mile with them. Solving the problems of today is not so simple as reading a book, but at least it can open the page to the conversation.