'HOW TO BE GOOD' by Nick Hornby

‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
“Who watches the watchers?”
Plato asked Socrates in 400 B.C.
“Who criticizes the critics?”
“Who is there to judge,
 if we live truthful and honest lives
full of goodness and love?”

Take on our modern selves,
take on our modern world,
just like in Plato’s time,
we seek a big truth about ourselves.
‘Tell me, whether there is or is not
absolute beauty or good,
or any other absolute existence?’

We pondered on our last meeting,
reading a little bit,
 a half or some of us,
the whole of the book:
‘How to be good.”
And yet, it occurred to me,
we were, to some degree,
all reading a different book,
hearing a different message,
affected by the different passions,
tastes,
emotions and attitudes
we bring to it.
The author,
one hopes,
would be pleased
with so many interpretations,
here is my reflection,
but is,
far from being the last word.

“We have a great belief in the power of words:
we read,
we talk,
we write,
we have therapists
and counselors and even priests
who are happy
to listen to us and tell us what to do,”
thought Katie,
the consummate liberal,
urban mom,
a doctor from North London,
whose world was being turned upside down:
“What happens when words fail us?”

Katie lived a different sort of life
in a different sort of world,
a world where action counted for more,
than words and feelings,
Katie had an affair with a man,
she didn’t care about.

“I think everything that you think,”
David,
without proper job or aim in life,
explained to his unfaithful wife:
“But I’m going to walk it like I talk it.”

Plagued by a bad back,
he visited a healer,
who cured him and changed him.
David, the angriest man in the neighborhood,
was replaced by a saint.

“I’m a good person in most ways,”
Katie began to think:
“But it doesn’t count for anything very much,
if you are a bad person in one way,
because most people are good people, aren’t they?”

“All my life I have wanted to help people,
that’s why I wanted to be a doctor,
and having failed at that,
I come home and fail
at being a wife
and a mum,
well,
I haven’t got the energy
to fail
at anything else.”
Katie finished her thinking and moved out
of their family house.

“I was living a wasted life.”
David smiled giving away his roast beef lunch:
“I don’t want to die feeling that I never tried,”
he managed to persuade five neighbors
to accommodate one homeless kid.
The healer moved in
and makes Katie
 to feel guilty about:
the lies she has told,
the affairs she has had,
the hurt she had caused,
trying to get a feel
of where her own particular guilt lies.

“ I don’t want to play
‘the possession game’”,
the healer explained to Kathy
while making himself
comfortable
in their house:
“People become lazy
and spoiled
and uncaring,
they just want to own things.”
Kathy watched him
piling his plate
full
with food
she cooked
and bought.
He caught her gaze
and smiled
apologetically:
“But I do have to live somewhere,
don’t I?”


“We become unhappy and take Prozac,
and then we might get divorced,
we will definitely die…”
Katie reached forward
in her suddenly
world-weary
and
bleak frame of mind
touching the foreheads
of her daughter and her son.
“I just need some time out,”
she cried.
“Why?” David asked.
“Because I’m frightened
of what
you might do next.”
She replied.

“I can’t stand you,
you are awful,
always has been,
always will be.”
The healer banged the phone down.
“Who you talked to?”
David asked surprised.
“My sister.”

“It’s so easy to love someone
you don’t know,
whether it’s a homeless kid
or the whole world,”
Kathy laughed:
“But staying civil to your family,
now there is a miracle,
don’t worry I understand,
it’s just happening to us.”

The healer and the homeless kid
left their house.
It felt strange,
suddenly,
they were on the verge
of returning to their old life:
sarcasm and bitterness,
bad novels,
spare bedrooms,
life in a city,
where no one
cares
about anyone.
work for living,
shop in a supermarket,
watch TV,
read newspaper
and drive a car.
Eat frozen pizzas
and
live everyday life
with a huge slice of luck
and a little spare cash
to spend on overpriced goods…
living a nice life,
that makes us feel good.


‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
“Who watches the watchers?”
Plato asked Socrates in 400 B.C.
“Who criticizes the critics?”
“Who is there to judge,
 if we live truthful and honest lives
full of goodness and love?”

Katie looked at David,
at her daughter,
at her son
and said:
“I can live this life,
and yet,
I am disappointed
with
my work,
my marriage
and myself,
what is there to hope for?”
She caught a glimpse
of the night sky
and there was nothing
out there at all.
But maybe,
just maybe,
if she would look deep
into her children’s eyes
she would find the answers
she was looking for.