HEALTHY ATTITUDES (FAITH, COURAGE, COMPASSION)

I've been reading about Nora Ephron (1941-2012), journalist, writer and filmmaker.  She wrote When Harry Met Sally,  Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia.  Ephron's mother and father wrote screenplays for Hollywood movies.  Nora was told by her mother, "Everything is copy." Later when her parents began fighting and drinking, Nora fled.  She wrote letters home.  In a play her parents wrote she discovered scenes from the letters she had written them.  So everything was copy to her parents.  Even Nora herself.  

We've seen this elsewhere.  When I hear preachers use as a sermon example  someone's confidential concerns ("A parishioner once asked me. . . .") I wonder if that parishioner wanted their problem to become copy, even anonymously.  If any one would.

I've also been noticing someone who uses a health scare (now resolved) as a fulcrum, writing and talking about it in posts, books, tweets, podcasts, events, interviews, every available venue.  For months now this has struck me as an unhealthy use of one's potential tragedy--as a route to recognition; a manipulative route perhaps, or a cheap route.  If a child says something adorable, as all children do, and we tweet it, in a sense the child becomes copy, does he not?  Condolences become copy, a child's love, a friend's concern--all become copy.  Someone may wish to be left out of a book, but the writer ignores the wish in the interest of good copy.

I love someone who embraced his personal tragedy with faith, courage and compassion.  Recognition would have been the last thing on his mind. He moved from diagnosis to acceptance with grace.  He didn't blog, tweet, talk, write, publicize, sell, market or in any way look for secondary gain from the heartbreak he was facing.  He trusted the love of God and family and sought only peace.  He never gave up trying and hoping to live, but never made a show of himself.  He wanted no microphone, no camera for his tears.  He thought of himself as a child of God and no better than anyone else. He was a witness. He was young.  I love someone else who died old and was the same way.  

Maybe this doesn't matter.  But maybe it does.  Somehow it seems we have choices to make at every time of life.  I hope I make the right ones.  Nina Naomi