It’s been a privilege

This column was published on July 4, 1985. It was my final column for The Patriot Ledger.

July 24, 1985

I am sitting in my office poring over a pile of mail that has come across my desk during the past five years. I have saved all of it, every compliment, every criticism. I've learned from the letters. I've learned what you care about, what makes you angry, what makes you cry.

You sustained me when I thought all the words had been said, when I wondered what gave me the right to be espousing theories, to be telling you about my family and friends.

When self doubt sat on my chest like too many pounds of weights, a letter would come along, saying, “Hey, that's the way I feel. You wrote that column about me! How did you know?” And your words would lift and inspire me.

What I gleaned most from your letters is something I suppose I knew all along. The world may change, but people don't. Franklin, Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan may sit in the White House, Hitler, or Khadafi may terrorize the world. Everything may change outside us, but inside we fight the same demons, we dream the same dreams. We love. We cry. We worry. We regret. Rabbit is only Babbitt in a fancier car, our shared emotions binding us to the past and connecting us to the future as they have connected me to you.

“Why do you write” you have asked in so many notes. “Where do you get your ideas? “The ideas come from life, observed, overheard, sometimes from my children, sometimes from strangers. At times they seem to appear from nowhere, but really they have been waiting, unresolved feelings, wayward facts that won't let me be until I have given them words. Why do I write? Because I have to, because I never know how I feel about something until I've thought it out on paper. The spoken word is impatient; it flits through the air, determined to make an impression before it has done its homework. And because it is impetuous, it is not always accurate.

I have tried to be accurate and honest. That honesty didn't always come easily. There were feelings, small intimacies, I was reluctant to share. I didn't want to tell you about my children. I didn't want to let you so personally into my life. Sometimes, after writing, I felt exposed and vulnerable, but it was okay because your letters came, corroboration that what I was feeling you were feeling, too, that we were in this together. These letters made my work a joy.

The other day I was at the movies, the theatre packed, and people, in the process of sitting down, accidentally brushed a shoulder here, and elbow there. “I’m sorry’s” and “excuse me’s” buzzed through the air, the accidental touching of a stranger caused for contrition.

And I thought, not for the first time, but with renewed sadness, how strange it is that here we are, all prisoners of this world, stuck here for an undetermined length of time, facing all the same problems, yet we remain resolutely aloof, regarding each other cautiously, almost with curiosity, excusing, and I'm sorrying our way through life, as if the stranger at the movies, whose armrest we share, has no relationship to us.

But he does. You see, he is us.

Too many of us live life in isolation, holding the hand of a spouse surrounded by family and friends, sharing events and decades, but guarding our secret selves. We hoard hurts, joys, fears, expectations. Why, because we're afraid. Because we think no one has felt what we are feeling. We fear exposure, rejection. We think no one will understand. That's a pity, because our feelings aren't unique and we aren't alone.

We have learned this, you and I. We are not strangers in a movie theater. We have touched each other by sharing our thoughts and a little bit of our lives.

I will reread your letters years from now, and remember this, and I will feel renewed. And for this privilege, I will be forever grateful.