Reply To: Still Life: What do you think of Timmer Hadley’s idea?
What excellent thoughts, and so well expressed, everyone! I agree with your premises– in many professions, the best understanding, empathy, and ability to capture the essence of something is often found through personal experience. I certainly believe it can enhance an actor’s performance, or a dancer’s, or an artist’s, or a writer’s — I’ve heard many such people explaining where they got their inspirations, and it’s often amazing what they can draw on to express themselves; and as Maureen says, other professions that require empathy and understanding often do the same as well.
Yet, there’s also the other side– some people, because they’ve suffered or been mistreated, use that for justification to become abusers themselves, to make others suffer because they have. I think that’s what Timmer was hinting at about Ruth, and there may well be a degree of that within her, but as Tara says, perhaps in the case of Jane and Andy, Ruth may simply have made an insensitive, immature error in judgment and didn’t consider the consequences. I know Ruth has a good heart (the manure cleanup, for example) but she seems unable to control certain outbursts of behavior (she apologized sincerely to Gamache after being rude at that first meeting, but admitted that she’d probably do it again). As she said, her entire life seemed to be a battle and she has no talent for choosing which battle to fight, but for the most part, she steps up when the chips are down, and she now harnesses her inner turmoil to see the world with greater insight, the dark and the light, and turn it into her poetry. Maybe it took her years to attain that state of self-awareness and insight, though. And she’s still a work in progress!
