Point of view

Recently I have been schooled a bit regarding point of view.

For as long as I can recall, I’ve wondered what it’s like to be someone else, with that person’s knowledge and learning and culture and Center of Universe. I suppose that’s a natural thing to wonder about if like me you’re a person who enjoys writing fiction. I further suppose that curiosity regarding another’s point of view is a necessary component of empathy, without a dollop of which individually we are surely lost collectively.

Some selves I simply cannot imagine inhabiting. Others seem sufficiently tied to my own experience and preferences and prejudices that I can well imagine what that person is thinking or feeling. Of course, I could well be wrong.

I don’t understand the internal world of my cousin Larry, a Roman Catholic priest. I like him and I love him but I can’t imagine living his life. The same is true for most of the people with whom I’m acquainted.

I’ll never understand someone who wants to be a cop but I’m thankful beyond measure for the officer who took care of my daughter the night she was assaulted.

The people in this world whose lives and outlooks I value are too numerous to count, even if we limited the enumeration to those I have actually met. I am willing to go a step further in saying that the good vastly outnumber the bad in this world. At least, that’s what I hope and believe.

But there are in fact bad people and one of them touched my daughter’s life and through her, the lives of all the people who know and love her, of whom there are many.

I don’t understand this bad person’s point of view. And I don’t want to. I hope he is brought to heel at some point, preferably before he assaults any more young women. But I don’t want to dwell on him because to do so takes me to a dark place that I prefer not to visit.

I choose instead to focus on my daughter’s point of view. She is quite a remarkable person and not because she’s my daughter. She cares about people, including people she will likely never meet. She is focused on charting a path forward that leaves her attacker behind. And she will go far down that path because she is a strong and intelligent and smart and caring person.

I don’t have a good ending for this one, if only because this sort of horror requires time above all. For healing, for absorbing, for finding the courage to peer around that next corner. But I will offer one last note – I have long doubted the statistic that one in five young women will face sexual assault. Based on my own experience and my knowledge of other men I knew, I just could not believe that so many men were predators.

Turns out, I was an idiot.

I have recently come to know that within what I consider my immediate family – my daughters and nieces and first cousins alone – are at least six women who have been subjected to this evil. Each one of them a smart, lovely person who adds to my world and yours by her presence.

I need to do a better job in future of being supportive in a way that is valued by the people in my life. I hope and believe I can.

Because, you see, recently I have been schooled a bit regarding point of view.