Best Book of 2013

At the end of 2012, I was pretty tuckered out.  I spent the year recovering from back surgery and serving on a pretty time-consuming committee at work, and I felt removed from my life and creativity and the people I love.  And I'm not even sure I realized it, until I saw the movie "The Beginners".  Such a quiet lovely movie, and after watching it, I vowed to be more connected in 2013. . . and I think I was.

But as it turns out, being more connected to the people around you isn't enough if you're disconnected from yourself.  I discovered that in one of the hardest ways possible in 2013, before reading A.M. Homes ridiculously strange and beautiful and funny and sad and celebratory novel "May We Be Forgiven."  But "May We Be Forgiven" showed up for me at just the right time as I was swimming back to the surface.

I don't want to give too much away about the book except to say that, for me, while reading the novel, the title felt like a question.  Is forgiveness possible?  Can we forgive each other?  Can we forgive ourselves? And it made me think deeply about how much worry and sadness and embarrassment and fear I carry around with me--most of it over incredibly trivial things or things that I have blown way out of proportion.  Why are we so hard on ourselves?  Why is it often easiest to default to thinking the worst of ourselves?

The characters in "May We Be Forgiven" do far more terrible things than I hope I have it in me to do, but they work to redeem themselves.  And they work to forgive each other and that work comes mostly through love.  And I want to learn from that--to learn to do that work and to also forgive others, even people who aren't interested in my forgiveness.  Because even though forgiveness is a kind of grace, it's also incredibly self-serving.  And not "self-serving" in a negative way, in the sense that it's a way of caring for yourself and freeing yourself from anger.

I was filled with a strange and powerful sadness in 2013, but as it ebbs away and I start building a new future, that empty space is filling with love.  And that's how I will forgive myself.

I want the same for you.