Choices

You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world . . . but you do have some say in who hurts you.                                John Green

I finished reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green this week. A few pages into it, I thought, “Maybe this was not such a good idea.” Since I just lost a close friend to lung disease which had no known cause, reading a book in which a main character had terminal cancer in her lungs seemed to have been a questionable decision on my part.

But I kept reading anyway.

And—wow. As I said in my last blog post, I knew that the young adult genre was the right place for me to turn when I was hurting. Young adult novelists face problems head on—no candy coating, no pretensions. Is this a world full of pain? Uh-huh. Do bad things happen to good people? You betcha. But young adult writers don’t leave you in existential nihilistic emptiness. A message of hopelessness and meaninglessness is not part of the unspoken contract between reader and writer. In fact, the opposite is true. Some small seed of hope is expected, despite the painful truths explored in a young adult novel. And I believe that John Green truly delivered on this promise in this work of art.

He hit on the truth. There is a layer of fear that the chronically and terminally ill face each day—the impact of their conditions, and especially of their deaths, on those who love them. It’s a fear born of love. We all face it—there is always a risk in loving someone: risk of disappointment, risk of rejection, risk of loss, risk of hurting those we love ourselves. But most of us choose to love others anyway—accepting that risk is our choice. We may not like the risk, but we choose love anyway.

Shortly after a hospitalization in which the critical nature of my friend Fal’s illness became evident, we were sitting on her couch talking. Her husband came in, and she spoke to both of us. “You know, I yelled at Rudi for calling you. I said, ‘Hasn’t this woman already gone through enough already without having to deal with all this?’”  Then Fal paused and looked at me. “I don’t want people taking on more than they can handle to help me,” she said. “It’s . . . too much to ask.” She knew what was coming—the risks involved. And she wanted to protect us. She wanted to give her friends an out, in case we couldn’t handle the pain.

But we have a choice. We can choose to toughen up, to turn away, to distract ourselves or distance ourselves from others. Sometimes we do it for our own good—we know that getting too attached will lead to heartache. Sometimes it seems the wisest course. And sometimes we choose to love despite the terrible risks.

It doesn’t always seem like a choice. I could not help loving my friend, any more than I could help loving my own family. But, in truth, it is a choice. And that’s what Fal needed to know. That we, her friends, were walking into this situation with our eyes wide open. With a full understanding that we were taking on a big risk in sticking with her. And she wanted us to know that she’d forgive us if we couldn’t take that risk. She didn’t want us to get hurt.

I told Fal to let it go—she didn’t have any choice over whether we decided to hang tight or distance ourselves. We’d each do what we needed to do—she’d have to rely on each of us to make the right choices for ourselves. We knew she wouldn’t love us any less no matter what we chose. We’d promise to take care of ourselves and our needs, if she’d promise to take care of her own, and let go of ours. She reluctantly agreed. But she never stopped worrying about us.

Fal worried about her family above all else. When the kids are older, I’ll probably recommend The Fault in Our Stars to them. Because the other thing we want for our loved ones is the opportunity for each one of them to lead fulfilling lives, to be whole and to truly live and find happiness if we should pass before them. That’s what Fal wanted. John Green got that right, too.

The Fault in Our Stars doesn’t make the pain go away. But it reminds me that I had the choice to love Fal. I even had the choice to love my brother and sister.  And my choices have left me richer, despite the losses.

Thanks, John Green (and Augustus Waters).

Thank you, Fal.