The Profession of Good Health

I don't consider myself an especially lucky person, but every so often, good luck strikes me as it does most people from time to time. And as with everyone else, good luck often disguises itself as bad.

The last stroke of luck I had occurred last Thursday night. I went to the grocery store a little after 10:00 to pick up a few items we needed. On the way home, I was driving along one of Wichita's main drags when, in the pitch dark, I failed to see where a lane ended and accidentally drove up onto a stretch of curb, going about thirty miles an hour. At first, I thought I had just suffered a minor annoyance and continued to drive on. But after a while, I heard a constant thud thud thud and figured I must have had a flat. I pulled over and, sure enough, found the right front wheel of the car completely deflated.

I called my mother, who came out and arranged for a tow truck. We waited. And waited. And waited. For three hours. Until a towing service came and looked at the wheel. It was out of alignment and would have to be taken in for repairs, though I was told it could be driven for about a day on the spare. Great, I thought. Just my luck.

Well, in fact it was. Because the next day, as I was driving into central Wichita to an auto body shop, I spotted an ad on the marquee of the Orpheum, an old movie theatre that has had a revival as a theatre and occasional venue for viewings of classic films. The Orpheum would be showing Doctor Zhivago on Valentine's Day evening. And so, tomorrow night, I am going to get to see one of my favorite films in the threatre for the first time.

Many people, including regular readers of this blog, have asked me why I don't pursue a career in writing. Whenever I'm asked the question, I always think of Yuri Zhivago, the poet who chose to pursue a career in medicine, because he considered poetry "no more a profession than good health." I suppose that's close to my attitude. Writing never seemed practical--or at least, there never seemed to be a practical way to pursue it. To be a writer, one really needs a day job.

I suppose Yuri Zhivago's protestation can be understood in two ways. The first, as outlined above, is the more literal reading. But the less literal reading is that, for the writer, writing becomes as indispensible as good health. Keeping this blog has begun to show me that. I am on a much better emotional keel when I am writing regularly than when I am not. I ought to try to learn from this and keep the words coming, even in the hardest and the worst of times. But I tend not to.

Part of the reason for this is that, as a legal assistant, I was stuck doing work that just drained every drop of energy out of me by the end of the day. An hour of commuting on the subway--particularly when it involved the G--didn't help, either. And in a weird way, unemployment was worse for my motivation to write. There just was nothing to say, or so it seemed. What could I possibly have to say about being twentysomething, sporadically employed, and overwhelmed in New York City, that had not already been said before--or that would not be a total turn-off to anyone who might chance to read it?

I am learning, though, that our daily lives often hold more interest to others than we realize. Every day, there is a chance of something interesting happening to us, even if it's only seeing a beloved movie advertised on the marquee of a local theatre. Moreover, the very act of writing down these little moments in life almost compels us to examine the attitudes and feelings behind them--to strip away the husk of self-abnegation we surround ourselves with, that we might lay bare the the kernel of insight of which we are capable.

And surely that merits the name of "profession" at least as much as examining paramecea under a microscope.