Seize the Day

Today is supposed to be our “Seize the Day” day. Seven years ago my husband and I were hit by a car while crossing the street. We both had leg surgeries and went through months of recovery. But we were very lucky. It was Martin Luther King Day, so it’s easy to remember. And every year as we think about King’s legacy and how he moved a nation forward, we also think about our own mortality.

This morning on Al Franken’s show I heard Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles, who was there in Memphis with King when he was shot, talk about how King was almost killed years earlier (I didn’t know that, or had forgotten it) and how King spoke very movingly in his Mountain speech, the night before he was assassinated, about all that he would have missed if he had died then, including delivering his “I Have a Dream Speech” on the National Mall in Washington. Then King said, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

We cannot all measure our lives against his. To inspire a mass movement, to give one’s life for the larger cause of human justice, and to still have the power almost forty years later to inspire people to make the most of their lives and to treat each other right, is beyond what most of us are capable of. Nevertheless, his example and his sacrifice beg us to walk through life with our eyes wide open, to remember that our time here is short, and to do what we can to make the world a better place.

So each year at this time I try to think about what kind of life we are living and how fulfilled I am by it. I inevitably return to the idea that I would like to be able to leave some kind of mark, not one of empty fame but of having contributed something worthwhile. I try to tell myself that teaching writing and literature is important work. Sometimes I think it is, like when students feel the sting of injustice and recognize their own prejudices when we read literature about race or gender. But teaching college doesn’t give you the opportunity to move students the way daily interaction with students on the high school level would. And writing to a select academic audience about the concept of “separate spheres” or the little-known literary history of minor nineteenth-century women writers feels rather like mumbling in your sleep compared to what King did with his ideas and words. I find myself yearning to speak to a larger audience. To be a part of the larger conversation going on in this country about parenting, women’s life choices, democracy, and opportunity. I am always talking to my composition students about how through the written word we can enter the debates we read about and become an active participant in the world of ideas. But as an academic, I feel I am limiting myself to a very small intellectual sphere, a “separate sphere” of professors and grad students who are often competing with each other more than participating in a conversation.

What has motivated so much of my work as an academic is the desire for recognition. The research grant, the Ph.D., the publication in a scholarly journal, the book contract with a distinguished university press, and tenure have all been feathers in my cap. But how much true satisfaction have they yielded? If I knew, as King did, that my days were numbered, would I be content with the work I had accomplished? Would I feel that I had done what I had been put here to do? That I had used my abilities to leave the world a better place? What the hell good is a talent if you use it only for personal gain?

Of course, none of these questions are new or unique. I have read the tormented musings of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a nineteenth-century writer, who feared that her desire to write and publish was motivated by selfishness. She came to the happy conclusion that God gave her the talent and the desire to write for a reason. And I have heard Ethan Canin recently say at a seminar that he doesn’t think fiction writing serves any social purpose, that he writes simply because it makes him happy. Of course, many of us in the audience tried to argue with him that what he did was valuable beyond his own pleasure, not because we were writers ourselves but because we taught literature and were trying to inspire in students the notion that stories matter.

I have to disagree with Canin in order to feel that I do have some purpose on this earth. For I have been nearly all of my life drawn to stories and know that my only real talents lie somewhere in the world of words. Our job is to figure out how to make something meaningful out of the talents we have and to share that meaning with the people around us, however large or small that circle is. And we will not die peacefully, and the world will not move forward, unless we first believe that we have something, however small, to contribute.

Having just read back through what I have written, I am surprised at where my thoughts have led me. I didn’t plant to sit down and write about “the meaning of life,” if that’s indeed what I’ve done. God forbid that any writer would sit down with that goal in mind. The very weightiness of the subject could throw you into a fit of writer’s block. But a blog seems to give you the opportunity to write about whatever pops into your head.

So I guess I can say that I have in some way “seized the day.” Usually, our “Seize the Day” day goes by with nothing more momentous that a trip to the grocery store and we feel like we have failed once again to do anything spontaneous or memorable. Today, it seems, will be no different. We are dangerously low on eggs, frozen pizza, and diapers.

But we have spent the last day or so having some very serious talks about our future, seriously hashing out what it is we want to do with our lives—where we will live, where our daughter will go to school and grow up, what work we will do, and how we can make a living. Like our accident, Katrina has given us the opportunity to reassess our lives. Seven years ago, we realized how lucky we were to have each other and how much we wanted to spend our lives together. So when I took the job in New Orleans (only 4 weeks or so after our accident), we knew it meant a new beginning, not an end, for us. Now are waiting to see what new beginning is in store for us this time.