Selfish Children Need Altruism and Oscar Wao

“It's never the changes we want that change everything.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

In the last two days, I've felt overwhelmed by an aching in my heart for the people in my life who are down and hurting. For the record, I'm in no way trying to flex some altruism at you - I'm a selfish child and definitely can't get by feigning selflessness. Yeah....not possible and not realistic. What I'm trying to say is that I'm really just having a hard time shouldering my parent's separation and my family's struggles. (I also really hate the vagueness of my "struggles" and I wish I could be honest about everything, but this stuff is still new and I therefore I can't disclose everything here in case it hurts someone that I've been talking about it.) That being said, I will do my best to speak openly and truthfully about what I'm going through, because I know that many people have been/are in similar situations.

In general, the issue I'm grappling with is: when witnessing suffering, what, as individuals, is our role?

For myself, I find myself wishing that I could jump into superhero mode and fix it all, take away the stress, and cure the heartache with 'let me just comfort you'. Standard, right? Selfishly - I feel just so damn guilty all of the time - so fucking guilty. It kills me that I can't be there to solve anything and that ultimately it has to be up to other people to make choices for their own lives, but my heart is hurting in the process. I've delved into this a little bit, when my mom visited, in my post Loy Krathong Means Letting Go, but it is really difficult for me to talk about. Sometimes I wish I that I could just blog about raging and being all smiley in the land of smiles, but that wouldn't be honest. So, honestly, it is very difficult for me to watch people struggle right now. Weird, right? Ugh, I just want to make jokes and be sarcastic through this post, but I'm trying to be serious. Maybe this is the only issue that the heart starts to thaw a bit over...


Even beyond my own aching, when we see people we care about on destructive paths - either caused by their own actions, or perhaps due to outside life-happenings, what is our role? Is there something that we can do in this position? Is there something that we ought to do in these scenarios?


In one of my favorite books, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, a boy named Oscar is searching for love through a mixed up life that seems to never cut him a break. There is another character in the book who either antagonizes Oscar, constantly comes to Oscar's rescue, or resorts to pushing Oscar to make changes and to stop his sad slide through life. However, the battle is bigger than just a few nudges in a different direction and Oscar is ultimately never "shaken awake", but follows his own course.

I muse, "Are people destined for negative outcomes or is there something that can be done to avoid these destructive paths." Moreover, how come some people get caught up in  hopeless spirals where they don't know how to get to the surface, but some people learn how to kick? What is the determining factor that sets us apart from each other?

“That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep it away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.”
― Junot Díaz

I don't know what the answer is. I mean, the character in the book doing the nudging is trying everything he knows to encourage Oscar strive for a more social and 'happier' life. However, he is never really able to get through to Oscar. What does that mean for the rest of us? Can we 'shake' people awake - get them to snap out of 'it' (their state of depression, antisocial behavior, or perhaps even perpetual bad decision making)? Or, how can we/how should we participate in another person's life in a guiding sense? Is it even our role to do 'guiding' in any sense? (Who are we after all??) Is it fair for me to try to reach out to people struggling or is love all about just being there to support the ones that we care about and encourage them to pursue what they think is best for themselves? From my book example - was it Oscar's life experiences that cursed him to lead a life absent of love, or is Junot Diaz attempting to say that Oscar got what he was after at the end of the book - despite it being an unhappy ending in a traditional sense?

I know this part of the tirade doesn't give any answers, but poses more questions...yet, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this whole thing. I always say that I think that the point of life is learning how to love and perhaps I'm running the risk of getting personal, but I'm trying to understand how to love in light of this heavy feeling. This is what I'm struggling with. It's the realization that life keeps changing and rising new challenges for us all that scares me, makes me feel weak, and leaves me feeling like a child in unfamiliar darkness. I want to know about love and permanence and 'let me save you with my arms', but, this week, I'm left searching between the lines of best sellers for the medicine to cure a heartache.