“I think living the
blessed life is the luck of the draw. You don’t get control over the cards
you’re dealt—whether it’s fatal illness, death, accidents—but we do have
control over how we face those odds, how we play the cards. Some people with
awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies
they’re handed, and that seems courageous to me. That’s what interests me, more
than the fate of the blessed life.”—Ordinary People novelist Judith
Guest quoted by Jeannine Ouellette, “Judith Guest: Ordinary Person,” Secrets
of the City (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Oct. 19, 2004
The image accompanying
this post comes from the 1980 film adaptation of Ms. Guest’s Ordinary People. Judd Hirsch plays a compassionate psychiatrist and Timothy Hutton is his
patient, a teenager who exemplifies the courage that the novelist pays tribute
to: finding a way to come to terms with the tragedy that threatens to consume
his family.
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