Three small words

Have you ever read or heard a phrase for the first time and immediately knew you'd never forget it? Happens to me often. But recently, something I heard on an NPR news story stayed with me in a stronger way than anything has in a while.

Memoir author Marion Roach Smith was talking to callers about their own stories turned memoirs. It just so happens it was my uncle Victor who called in and told Marion about his memoir when she said the phrase that struck me so deeply. Vic explained his memoir in progress about his lifelong battle of depression that climaxed with a survived suicide attempt. Marion immediately asked him what made him survive. What kept him hanging on during those dark moments. The human pilot light, she said, is what keeps us surviving in even the darkest of times.

Something clicked for me when I heard those words. As a writer, the idea of empathy has been a re-occurring theme throughout my life. It was there when I wrote short stories in elementary school, poetry in middle school, literary analyses in high school, editorials in college, and now professional advertising. The human pilot light puts so perfectly into words exactly what drives me to write. The quest to find not just what makes people tick, but what keeps them living--literally and figuratively. Physically and emotionally.

Ever since then, I often wonder what keeps the pilot light burning of the hundreds of people I see each day on my way to and from work. What does the homeless man who sleeps in the alley think when he wakes each morning that carries him through another day?

Maybe it's nothing more than a simple animalistic instinct. I'd like to think all our pilot lights are the single thread that connects us all. At the same time, I think each person's is as unique as their fingerprint. But then again, I really just don't know the answer at all.

The question astounds, confuses, delights and intrigues me all at the same time. But I know that where ever my writing takes me, I want to spend my life answering it.