Have you found yourself yet? And if so, how?
Maggie O'Farrell, author of seven very successful novels, has worked out who she is using her seventeen (that is correct) brushes with death, and has put it all together for us in her memoir: I Am, I Am, I Am. And it is very good.
O'Farrell has had a truly amazing life. Seventeen times she very nearly died (think attacks on lone walks, aeroplane near misses, medical blunders and and and and), but seventeen times she came back to live another day. These experiences have taught her a lot about herself, and she has assembled each episode into this uniquely structured memoir. After reading this book, it is almost impossible not to compare, to think back on one's own life to times of danger or to those fleeting moments when guiding forces seem to have intervened and prevented something truly awful from happening. I have not had a life like O'Farrell's. And I come from Africa.
But what if you did know the exact day when you were destined to die? Is this something you would want to know? And how might it affect your life? The Immortalists explores this option after four young siblings consult a travelling fortune teller who predicts the exact death date of each of them. Half way through this novel I wouldn't have minded if all four Gold siblings had died at the same time, like immediately, but it is worth it to hang in there as it's a book that gets better in the second half.
Could it be instead that some of us live lives that have been shaped by the small, by a huge number of minor chords, by repetitive everyday attrition, by little tests that slowly reveal who we are? Personally, I love to be told about myself by answering a gazillion questions (think the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs). I also suspect my birth date has subliminally influenced me. And this has been all well and good, until the library poster for the Lunar Year of the Dog arrived at work. To my dismay I see I am an Ox: steady, loyal, determined, blah blah blah. Just say "plodding" and be done with it why don't you? I love my western Astrology sign of Sagittarius, but I am not a happy Ox.
Then I happened to glance at the top of this draft page and saw that this is my 200th library blog post.
I am indeed doggedly bullish. But I like to think of myself as an Ox armed with a Sagittarian bow and arrow with which to optimistically shoot my ideas all over the place. Maybe this is how I have found myself. Maybe it is with this kind of action I prove to myself: I Am, I Am, I Am!
Add a comment to: Have you found yourself yet?