Last night Bob read my draft of an op-ed for the New York Times in which I attempt to make a convincing case that we who live in fairly stable circumstances and have friends to enjoy should try spending one hour a week over coffee with someone who’s more isolated due to homelessness, say, or chronic mental illness.
Bob (who is not only my husband but my favorite critic and one of the smartest, funniest people I've ever known, so - do I need to say this? - his opinion matters to me) liked the draft (whew!). He also suggested inserting a concession along the lines of "This may sound like an utterly absurd notion, but ..."
Why didn’t I think of that?
After all, a concession can defuse a reader’s resistance. In this case a resistant reader would be confronting a proposition that seemed at first glance (and perhaps at last gaze) ... well, weird. Why would anyone want to make a commitment like that to a lonely stranger?
Maybe "lonely stranger" sounds vaguely sexual (but doesn't everything?). Or it sounds risky, because the only time we meet people who've been roped off into a "special" category in the public mind is when someone stuck there gets bad press for hurting or offending someone outside the ropes. Maybe everything just seems too overwhelming and we withdraw, like Prufrock, to measuring out our life by teensy spoonfuls.
And like Prufrock, as we linger on the "safe" side of the ropes do we keep wondering, "'Do I dare?' And 'Do I dare?'"
Making a carefully limited commitment to a stranger just doesn’t feel daring to me. And I concede the point: it’s hard for me to see this from someone else’s point of view. I'm too busy trying to get you to see it from mine!
Please see the entire diary series on this and related topics. And if you'd rather email me than post a comment here at Kos, write to freestyle.volunteer@earthlink.net.