A refuge for difficult times & a realisation

Books are a great refuge in difficult times and thinking about this, I remember a game at our offsite.

Name 2 of your favorite books, we were asked, fiction and non-fiction.Timeline pressed, I decided to go with the easy route: “top of mind” books rather than favourite.

"Never Let Me Go", I wrote, and "Becoming"

I remembered how I got hold of Ishiguro’s book. It was assigned reading for my daughter and she suggested I read it.

It hooked me from the word go. I was a boarding school kid and loved the start. Childish joys and childish horrors, helplessness in the face of authority, friendships and isolation. I had experienced it all and identified with it. 

And then out of nowhere, the realization of the truth that the protagonists faced.  (Spoiler alert !) The inevitable that would happen. The struggle to overcome it. The helplessness when there is a finality to the path that will have to be followed. First, the rage. Then, the mechanical acceptance.

As I closed the book, it left me with a gut punch, it haunted me. And though I had read it almost 5 years ago, it still stayed with me. Certainly, I would not say its my favorite of all time. But clearly, it had carved a place in my head.

Michelle Obama on the other hand just had a great story to tell. 

What are the odds that you start in a tough part of Chicago, and find your way to the White House?  A solid family that supported you and shielded you, a self-belief that never swerved, opportunities that were seized, sometimes serendipitously and sometimes with a fight, a romance that sparked many things including marrying the man who would be President.

You’d think reaching the highest political office of USA would be a victory that would overcome many things.. but then the continuing challenges, the inability to secure wins for policy matters close to their heart, the microscope under which a young family had to live, the mundane realities often at conflict with being the seemingly “supreme” FLOTUS.

And as you turn the pages of the thick hardcover book, the realization that here is a person who has found her voice and learned to use it. Who has faced great challenges and overcome them. Who has also looked back and held out a hand for people staring up at seemingly impossible and inevitable mountains of struggles that daunt each one of us.

Reflecting on my choice of  books, I realized that by a strange coincidence, I had chosen 2 books that were linked by a strong thread : a book about the hopelessness of trying to circumvent the inevitability of life and death, and then a book about the immense hope of making things better for yourself and others.

A book about “being” and then a book about “becoming”.