“Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less
I picked up Andrew Sean Greer’s Less yesterday and I’m almost halfway through the book. The book is all about an aging gay writer’s last minute worldwide trip to avoid the wedding of a former lover. I have very little in common with the hero of the book, other than the hero is turning 50 and I am 48. It wouldn’t be my typical book choice ordinarily, but Less won the Pulitzer Prize. I wanted to experience what Pulitzer Prize writing is like these days and the book does not disappoint. It has been an adventure and a glimpse into a life which is very, very different from mine and yet I find Arthur Less, the book’s protagonist, to be so relate-able and easy to empathize with. Even though we are very different people, Arthur Less and me, I connect with his humanity, his humility, his fears of aging and his need to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I think as people, we are always concentrating on what makes us different, unique, special and differential from each other, because deep down, we really know that at our very cores, we are all, and in sometimes a delicate, fragile, exquisite way – very, very much the same.
Later tonight, I will watch the Super Bowl with my family and the rest of most of America. I will connect with my fellow human beings, in a vastly different way, than I am connecting right now by reading an insightful, Pulitzer Prize winning book. And yet, in both activities, I am and will be engaged, in beautiful human connection. The rapport felt when an author expresses the very feelings and thoughts that I have had churning inside of me from time to time, is very similar to the relational laughter being shared at the audacity of the funny Super Bowl commercials or just the general anticipation and excitement in the air, for the “big game” tonight.
“Sharing a life together is sharing steps in time. The music is different to each of us, but how beautiful the dance.” – Vinay
