Today's Column

Ghostory

I've been really enjoying detective novels over the last few years and I recently discovered an author whose name is Stuart M. Kaminsky. He writes about several different characters, but the one I've been enjoying most is Lew Fonesca, who lives and works in Sarasota, Florida. Fonesca’s wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Chicago, and he got in his car and just drove until it quit, which happened to be in Sarasota. Fonesca struggles with depression, and his work is finding people. He's a process server. More often than not, according to him, it's the people that find him, rather than vice versa.

Digressing a little, it's been a delight to me to find over the years that there are just as many nuggets of wisdom in fiction as there are in nonfiction books, and I ran into this wonderful little bit in one of Kaminsky's books called “Denial.” It's on page 114 if you want to check my sources. Fonesca is talking about one of the people he's finally found, who supplys him with a small piece of information he needs. He says, “I left without looking back. If I paused, he would tell me his story. I couldn't handle any more stories. They filled the air wherever I went, invisible, ghostly. Ann (Fonesca’s therapist) was right. There was no hiding from ghosts, mine or other peoples.”

The main question that my teacher, Byron Katie, asks of everyone is, "Who would you be without your story?" In reading this little piece in Kaminsky it occurred to me that our stories are ghosts, and our ghosts – or the things that we think of as ghosts – are our stories. It's clear that we live better without them, but how do we lay these ghosts to rest? It's true that there’s no hiding from ghosts, but it's also true that there's no need to. The ghosts, the stories, the beliefs that trouble us that we struggle for years to change or vanquish finally turn out to be just clouds passing across clear blue sky. And we are not the clouds. What we really are is the sky. Thou art that.