I found a surprising bit of substance in a piece of escape fiction last week. Laurence Shames, in “Scavenger Reef,” tells of the death of Augie Silver, one of those rare individuals who are effortlessly successful in everything they do. A gifted artist, kind and unpretentious, generous to his friends, impervious to the superficial…genuine, likeable, caring, content. The gem though, was in his friends and acquaintances, who must suddenly confront life without him. Several find they have constructed their identities and self-worth around their relationship to Silver. When he dies, the facade crumbles. They must come to terms with their lack of a personal identity, with their failures and insubstantial values.

Before I myself came to terms with this issue, I more than once subjugated (for want of a better word) my own personality and self-worth to seemingly more successful (again, for want of a better word) individuals. Even now it is easy to slip into comparisons…someone better looking, more dynamic, more gregarious, more talented, more civic-minded, more whatever. I know now that such behaviour is a waste of time and opportunity and emotion. Learning to value who and what and where you are, to work with that, to build on it, is perhaps the highest of achievements.

This writing brings to mind another story, a western. In Elmore Leonard’s “Tonto Woman,” the protagonist Ruben Vega confronts a woman living in shame and exile because her face has been tatooed by Apaches. “There is no one else in the world like you,” he tells her. Now that is a truth to live by.

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