BE YOUR LIFE'S HEROINE

Some of us find it easy to blaze our way through life. My husband, for instance, as a child would listen to a redneck family friend who told the most enthralling tales, and he adopted this rare story-telling style that’s at once self-deprecating and larger-than-life, such that he’s most thoroughly the charming, rascally, even legendary hero of his own life.

Some of us, though, aren’t as big. We’re small. And we’re quiet. And it’s easy to feel that we’re buffeted by the hard facts and circumstances of life. Modern life, especially. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks feeling unimportant and disposable and utterly at the mercy of the faceless companies that rule almost every aspect of life: tech companies, online marketplaces, branchless banks. Even smaller businesses seemed to jump joyfully onto the dog pile. And it seemed that the more I struggled to get out, the more it all just piled on. All this, while my mother was in the hospital and my beloved dog is starting to have trouble seeing. And it’s hot, like, really hot over here in California.

I don’t mean to complain: I just mean to let you know that if you have stuff going on and you’re feeling the same way, then you’re not alone.

I started to feel rather insignificant, like a Fanny Price or an Anne Elliot or a Jane Eyre.

And then I remembered that these drab little wrens are the heroines of their stories too. Maybe they’re not as vivacious as an Emma Woodhouse or as undaunted as Flora Post or as plucky as a Rosalind in the Forest of Arden…but there are many ways to be a heroine.

And all heroines have their challenges in the world around them and their character flaws inside them to overcome, and it just depends on when in the story you catch them. Is it Lucy Honeychurch when she’s so confused she’s managed to mislead even herself?

Is it Olivia in deep mourning, right before she falls head-over-heels in love during the topsy-turvy time of twelfth night?

It’s the timing that matters. All is lost in a romantic comedy, right before the happy-ever-after.

Sometimes I ask myself, “What would Lady Caroline Dester do?” Lady Caroline is one of the heroines of Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1922 The Enchanted April, and she’s quite the opposite of me: effortlessly elegant, serene, almost lethargic, and she faces very little struggle or opposition in the world.

It’s a good reminder, as all “What Would So-and-So Do?” thought experiments are. But of course, it’s not a question of what any of these heroines would do in my stead, but of what I need to do as my own heroine. Which, as you can imagine, is sometimes difficult to step into…

So, my friends, remember to be the heroines and heroes of your own lives. Create a world of wonder around you, in the way that you do best, whether it be through your unique work, or by gardening, or cooking, or decorating your home, or taking care of others, or just by serving up everything you do with an extra scoop of love and with extra magic sprinkles.

One last note to say that the lovely people at Wally marketing are doing something they’re calling the Good Vibes movement campaign, which entails projecting inspirational quotations onto big buildings in Los Angeles and New York. They kindly asked me to contribute a quotation, and so if you live in the selected city you might turn the corner one night soon and be surprised by a big lit up sign directing you to BE YOU LIFE’S HEROINE.

Thanks not only for the experience, Wally, but for popping up and being lovely at one of those moments my plot most needed something simple and wonderful.