Light my Way

 Who had vision for 2020????  Whodda thunk????
 
The tree is up, with all its lights and ornaments. The Chanukah candles will burn every night for the next week. 
 
Funny that there is such a terrible history between Christians and Jews, when we are ultimately searching for the same thing: love, community, joy, peace, safety and light.  We each created rituals to light the darkness, to celebrate life and creativity in an unforgiving world of disease, greed, and fear.
 
Here are three writers that illuminated my 2020.

1) EB White: The Essays of E.B.White 
Thoughtful and inspired writing is always a panacea to whatever’s going on. Gary, my favorite cousin on my dad’s side, gifted me this incredible treasure. While Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little may be White’s calling card, his true brilliance is on display here.  Coincidentally, Hugh Jackman shared this year that White’s Here is New York is his favorite go-to as a gift for friends (and it’s included in The Essays), so we can say Gary was on to something.   

At the age of 58, White reflects on the night before getting a new puppy that this could be his last evening gazing on a world of “order and peace” because for the first time he realizes there was a strong likelihood "the dog would survive the man. It has always been the other way around”.

This artist took nothing for granted: “One never knows what images one is going to hold in memory returning to the city after a brief orgy in the country…Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists – just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.
  
White’s time is up, but his love of life is on full display for us in this remarkable collection.

2) Elizabeth Gilbert: Big Magic  
In a year of disappointment, grief and quarantining, Gilbert’s call to creatively express ourselves (paint, drum, dance, write, sing, bake) is an Anthem for 2020.  How's this:

 Your own reasons to create are reason enough. Merely by pursuing what you love, you may inadvertently end up helping the rest of us plenty. (“There is no love which does not become help,” taught the theologian Paul Tillich). Do whatever brings you to life then. Follow your own fascinations.

Writing lights me up. A dear friend and fellow mom of three texted me, “Yes, I think I need to find my own outlet.”  We all do.
​It’s a silver lining of 2020.
 
3) Olga Tokarczuk: Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead 
This 2018 Nobel Prize Winner is virtually unknown in America. This Polish tome deserves mention because it’s unlike any fiction I’ve ever read. It’s a feminist Fargo written by a darkly comedic Thomas Mann.
Musings like this: 

Sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
 
And this:
I have a Theory. It’s that an awful thing has happened—our cerebellum has not been correctly connected to our brain. This could be the worst mistake in our programming. Someone has made us badly. This is why our model ought to be replaced. If our cerebellum were connected to our brain, we would possess full knowledge of our own anatomy, of what was happening inside our bodies. Oh, we’d say to ourselves, the level of potassium in my blood has fallen. My third cervical vertebra is feeling tension. My blood pressure is low today, I must move about, and yesterday’s egg salad has sent my cholesterol level too high, so I must watch what I eat today.
 
Tokarczuk creates an odd, unapproachable protagonist who is wounded and alone; someone easily overlooked in every day life, and show life through her eyes. Reminds me that not only are we all fighting our own battles, but we are each the hero of our own story when we take action.
 
Share your favorites below, and the why (and notice, none of mine even came out in 2020 – though I did read many many wonderful recent releases in my book groups).

Excited for the new insights and awareness from books that will light me up in the coming year.