What if?
It was the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival this weekend, and I was consequently as happy as a pig in slop. A broke pig, unfortunately, which meant I only made it to two events. But better than nothing. I’m entranced by the idea of living in London or New York , when you could go to this stuff all the time. Like, ALL. The Time. Maybe one day.
Anyway, I went with my boss and another colleague to An Hour with Lionel Shriver, and before it started my boss leaned over and said “I’m always so pleased with myself for just coming to these things.”
”I know,” I said. “I look at all the forty-something housewives in here and think ‘That’s so me in fifteen years’.”
“There’s worse things to be,” he said, and he’s right. It’s AWESOME being a book geek. (It was depressingly female-heavy though; sitting with my two male colleagues I was probably sitting with 20% of the males in the thousand-seat Aotea Centre. OK, maybe there were a few more than that. I came home and told Steve all about it, but briefly, so that he wouldn’t die of the boredom that was visibly sucking his will to live.) But anyway, I’ve started reading The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, which talks about something that most people I know don’t tend to think about - some actually seem scared to think about it.
It’s the idea that it’s OK to think about what might have been, to examine our life choices and either revel in our rightness or try to fix what might need to be fixed. If you think too much about this stuff it can fry your brain, but in moderation it’s ok. I probably do it a little too much, but I’m working on it. It was so cool to hear someone else (who has written a book that’s pretty much one big fat what-if) talk about the power our roads not taken can have on us - almost as much power as the roads we do take.
The book is about a woman who either kisses or doesn’t kiss a man who is not her husband at the beginning of the book. The narrative is impelled along parallel lines; one dealing with what happens if she doesn’t succumb to temptation; one stream dealing with what happens if she does. There are consequently two of each chapter, in a kind of Sliding-Doors device. It’s fascinating. But something Shriver said really grabbed me. She wrote the book because she once had to make a “very painful” decision between two men, and for a while she felt as if the life she would have had with the one she didn’t choose was as real to her as the one she was living. At every event in her life, she thought about what this or that would have been like with the other man. It made it harder, she said, because they were both wonderful men. “It wasn’t a choice between Mr Great and Mr Crap,” she said, “it was a choice between Mr Not-Quite and Mr Not-Quite, which is really all there is out there anyway.”
It grabbed me because I’ve experienced what it’s like to live tandem lives, particularly when it comes to my work. Six years ago I was offered an amazing job in book publishing. I turned it down for various reasons, and for the last six years have followed the fortunes of the person who had that job. Every time a book came out I thought “That would have been me”, every time one of that person’s authors was in the news, every time they were thanked on an acknowledgements page, that would have been me. But after interviewing for it a couple of weeks ago and being turned down, that life has dropped out of my mind like a withered branch off a tree. That little cul-de-sac of thinking has suddenly been resolved, it’s off the table. Closure, if you will. I have realized that it was different - that it would have its triumphs but also its downsides. That it was a choice between a not-quite and a not-quite, not a not-quite and perfection. When we really look at ourselves, I bet most of us live more than one life - that all of us at some time wonder about one career move, or decision, or person, and project ourselves into a life that might have been. A fascinating concept, and a very liberating one, when you don’t take it too far.
Anyway, I went with my boss and another colleague to An Hour with Lionel Shriver, and before it started my boss leaned over and said “I’m always so pleased with myself for just coming to these things.”
”I know,” I said. “I look at all the forty-something housewives in here and think ‘That’s so me in fifteen years’.”
“There’s worse things to be,” he said, and he’s right. It’s AWESOME being a book geek. (It was depressingly female-heavy though; sitting with my two male colleagues I was probably sitting with 20% of the males in the thousand-seat Aotea Centre. OK, maybe there were a few more than that. I came home and told Steve all about it, but briefly, so that he wouldn’t die of the boredom that was visibly sucking his will to live.) But anyway, I’ve started reading The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, which talks about something that most people I know don’t tend to think about - some actually seem scared to think about it.
It’s the idea that it’s OK to think about what might have been, to examine our life choices and either revel in our rightness or try to fix what might need to be fixed. If you think too much about this stuff it can fry your brain, but in moderation it’s ok. I probably do it a little too much, but I’m working on it. It was so cool to hear someone else (who has written a book that’s pretty much one big fat what-if) talk about the power our roads not taken can have on us - almost as much power as the roads we do take.
The book is about a woman who either kisses or doesn’t kiss a man who is not her husband at the beginning of the book. The narrative is impelled along parallel lines; one dealing with what happens if she doesn’t succumb to temptation; one stream dealing with what happens if she does. There are consequently two of each chapter, in a kind of Sliding-Doors device. It’s fascinating. But something Shriver said really grabbed me. She wrote the book because she once had to make a “very painful” decision between two men, and for a while she felt as if the life she would have had with the one she didn’t choose was as real to her as the one she was living. At every event in her life, she thought about what this or that would have been like with the other man. It made it harder, she said, because they were both wonderful men. “It wasn’t a choice between Mr Great and Mr Crap,” she said, “it was a choice between Mr Not-Quite and Mr Not-Quite, which is really all there is out there anyway.”
It grabbed me because I’ve experienced what it’s like to live tandem lives, particularly when it comes to my work. Six years ago I was offered an amazing job in book publishing. I turned it down for various reasons, and for the last six years have followed the fortunes of the person who had that job. Every time a book came out I thought “That would have been me”, every time one of that person’s authors was in the news, every time they were thanked on an acknowledgements page, that would have been me. But after interviewing for it a couple of weeks ago and being turned down, that life has dropped out of my mind like a withered branch off a tree. That little cul-de-sac of thinking has suddenly been resolved, it’s off the table. Closure, if you will. I have realized that it was different - that it would have its triumphs but also its downsides. That it was a choice between a not-quite and a not-quite, not a not-quite and perfection. When we really look at ourselves, I bet most of us live more than one life - that all of us at some time wonder about one career move, or decision, or person, and project ourselves into a life that might have been. A fascinating concept, and a very liberating one, when you don’t take it too far.