We Need Each Other

Today is John Steinbeck’s 112th birthday. (It is if you believe the Doodle on Google’s home page today, and I believe everything I read on the internet, so it must be true.) Our lives overlapped; I was 12 when he died.  When I discover my life overlaps some interesting character, I always feel a brief sadness or regret. Like, “Oh shoot! I might have had the chance to know him, to talk to him, to go to a book signing… if I had only known.” Of course, as a snotty little 12 year old, I couldn’t have cared less. I probably recognized his name, but pfft, what did it matter to me?

Co-ink-i-dentally, I just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath. I might have read it a long time ago, probably under threat of an “F” in some English class, and I have faint memories of a very dusty movie. But reading this book in 2014, in my 57th year, knowing the history that has passed since it was written more than 60 years ago… Geez-o-pete! The story is gripping, tragic, magnificent. And that guy, Mr. Steinbeck, was an incredible writer. I guess I’m not the only one who noticed as he did receive the Pulitzer Prize in 1940.

It is the story of an Oklahoma sharecropper family who, driven from their failing land by banks and landowners, travels to a glorified California looking for work. “Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange.” Their journey represented the lives of so many migrant workers at that time. They were beyond poverty. They were homeless, starving, sick, pregnant, wet, cold. Yet they persisted with a courage and strength and hope that I’m not sure I could have roused.

Ma Joad, the character of strength in the book, declared, “If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.”

Many of us here are the Joad family. We are traveling our path. We struggle with problems that seem insurmountable, yet somehow we survive. True, we may be sick (abuse/anxiety/anger), but we can turn to “poor people,” our people, the people who understand what we’ve been through, the ones who are most likely to help. We are all “here” because we are on this journey together. And because we need each other.

Look around. Who is afraid? Comfort them. Who is lonely? Accompany them. Who is starving? Nourish them. In our own discomfort, we recognize the distress in others. We are the poor people and we must help one another. And we are the rich people, because we have one another.

We only have what we give.  - Isabel Allende

Reach out, now  –