Realizing It Ain't Gonna Happen

All through our lives we learn this, don't we? It ain't gonna happen.

I knew in first grade I wasn't ever going to be an artist. All it took was two looks: one at my own drawing, one at the drawing of the girl sitting across the aisle from me. Hers looked like something; mine didn't.

Throughout elementary school and junior high and high school, I really thought I was going to be a professional athlete--maybe basketball, surely baseball. All it took was one practice on the Hiram College freshman basketball team, one summer of American Legion baseball. And I knew that dream had been ... well, a dream.

For a while, I had some Grand Writer Dreams. Early in my career (the 70s), I had phenomenal luck. Every article I sent off was accepted--an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune (the first time I ever got money for my writing)--a cover story about teaching in National Review--a piece in Tennis magazine--others.

But soon enough ... things got real. Although I published some books with some great publishers (Scholastic Press, the U of Oklahoma Press), they sold only moderately well, and I realized that my sore forehead was due to my having hit the ceiling.

And--as I had done with my other dreams--I learned to ... adjust. And to be happy with what I had, not angry/frustrated about what I didn't have.

Lately, I've had a different kind of realization--that I'm not going to get to read all the things that I "should have" read--or want to read..

As I mentioned yesterday here, when Joyce and I saw Little Women a couple of weeks ago, I realized I'd never read it. So, home, I found our copy (actually, we have two) and began reading it the other night. Having fun doing so, too.

But there are so many other wonderful books--famous and otherwise--that I know I'm not going to have time to read. When I look, for example, at the best-books-of-the-year lists that appear in newspapers and magazines, I am always stunned to realize that (1) I've never heard of some of the author(s), (2) I've never heard of some of the books.

Need I say that this is humbling (if not humiliating)?

I do a lot of reading, as you probably know. I review a book a week for Kirkus Reviews. And I probably average two books/week of my own reading. That means I read (maybe) 150 books/year. Sounds like a lot until you realize how many gazillion books are out there--how many I ought to have read, etc.

I've sometimes thought it would be fun to write a piece called "The Most Famous Books I've Never Read"--a piece based on interviews with famous writers. (But that ain't gonna happen, either!) Besides, we're all pretty adept at suggesting we have read something that we haven't. I wrote here some time ago about my own experience with Infinite Jest (1996), the long, complex novel by the late David Foster Wallace, a novel I often, well, implied that I had read. (Isn't it telling that implied contains the word lied?)

And then I saw a former Western Reserve Academy student (Sam Clark) reading it in the coffee shop. Well, that could not stand! So I read the whole damn thing. It took, well, forever. I have a (tacit) deal now with Sam: Don't tell me about any book you're reading that I should have read!

Anyway ... realizing it ain't gonna happen. Even the greatest among us eventually most confront this. LeBron* is not going to be playing in the NBA when he's 65 (is he?); Seth Meyers will not be hosting Late Night when he's 80; etc.

So all we can do is find some amazing grace and yield when it's evident that we must and be grateful for all that we can and could do.


*spell-check just advised me to change this to "Lebanon"