In Defense of Head-in-Sandism

Ire. That is the best word for the feeling I felt when the book my sixth grade teacher read aloud to us ended unhappily. It couldn't have been the end, really. There had to be an epilogue that made the story resolve more to my liking. There just had to be.

That is, I think, the first time I remember feeling so betrayed by an author. How dare they make me care and then treat my emotions so cavalierly? (And how could my teacher, knowing the ending, go ahead with the choice?)

My mother tells me otherwise, though. She remembers how I would insist on finishing the bedtime story with Goldilocks coming back to the house of the three bears and becoming best friends with Baby Bear after her breaking and entering was forgiven.

I endured quite a bit of mockery in my English and Spanish literature classes following that first instance of disappointed trust in an author. Why did Kafka have to write such awful, depressing yuck? Why did Ana Maria Matute write with the assumption that everyone has something to hide?

And always, always came the accusation: Not everything is rosy and happy. Real life doesn't have happy endings. You can't stick your head in the sand for forever. Come on, wake up, get real.

I've been thinking about that recently as I continue to choose the story that ends happily and feel it unnecessary to follow the vast majority of news stories.  But it is not because I must retain some airbrushed, Disney-perfected view of the world. No, I've cried with too many people in stuck situations to manage that.

And therein lies the difference. I've cared, and the person suffering has known that I've cared.  Neither Ana Maria Matute nor Mariana the innkeeper will ever know how indignant I felt towards the nameless lodger who blackmailed his way to free lodging. And I get the impression that Franz Kafka would have been quite happy to damn all his readers to hell if he had known there would be any.

But J___, who has a past filled with abuse and abandonment... I've heard her out in the middle of a manic-depressive swing. K___, who lives in fear of the day his mother dies and he has no one else with the patience and dedication  to see he is fed and occasionally moved to sit up in his wheelchair.  And D___, who wonders what purpose life has now that he is old and has no family.

I've done nothing to make their ending happy. Separated by hundreds, if not thousands of miles, what could I do to affect change?

But I have cared, and they know it. 

I cannot care for the whole world, non-fictional and fiction (don't even dare bring up fantasy!). My heart isn't big enough, my soul not strong enough. Find me a hole in the sand and let me hide there, people who need my care will still find me.