The True and Outstanding Adventures

"The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters" is a grand and magnificent book. It follows the story of Olivia Hunt as she tries desperately to keep together her unravelling life, and her sister, Madeline Hunt, who is fighting vainly and ferociously against the leukemia and treatments that are wearing her closer to death. Olivia Hunt is somewhat of a pessimist, but she is also a fighter. Maddie, as Madeline is called, is an optimist, and a very idealistic one at that. This drives Olivia insane. Olivia is willing to fight where she thinks it might work, or where Maddie shames her into action, but she does not believe in helping everyone that she can or fighting needlessly or anything romantic like that.

Olivia is also working, throughout this book, on a movie adaptation of Don Quixote. Now, I have never read Don Quixote, but here is what I gather from what I've read about it: Don Quixote is basically crazy and reads nothing but books about chivalry and knighthood. He decides to become a knight, and he picks this random farmer, Sancho Panza, to be his squire. So they ride around, and Sancho takes care of Quixote while he is doing crazy things, like attacking windmills and freeing criminals -- all for the sake of love and good. At the end of the book, Quixote is dying, and he renounces all of his actions and beliefs -- about heroism, chivalry, and whatnot. He says that he knew everything he was doing was nonsense and that he had done it anyway for the sake of those good things, but now he was renouncing it. Sancho can't stand to hear Quixote say this, because, even though the things Quixote did were crazy, and somewhat pointless, Sancho has become infected with the ideals of heroism, bravery, and doing good. So even after Quixote has died, and renounced his own knighthood, those beliefs live on in Sancho Panza.

And that is kind of what happens with Olivia and Maddie. After Maddie dies, Olivia finds a note from her that says Maddie knew all along that she couldn't beat the cancer, and that she knew it was a helpless cause. She said she fought anyway, for the sake of fighting, and for being brave, and for others. Olivia, despite being a pessimist, starts to realize the point of fighting a losing battle -- not for the victory, but for the qualities you stand for in your fight.

I have a point. I'm getting there.

I live in reality. I'm a pessimist by nature. Bad things happen -- bad things are about the only thing that happen. I am convinced. But, I was raised on fairy tales, and I love them. I am an optimistic pessimist. I believe that everything is, by nature, evil. But I have this weak, pulsing, thing inside me that hopes that some things might defy their evil nature and make good.

It's a false hope. As with this situation with Han, the hope doesn't belong there. No matter if he says he loves me, no matter if I love him, no matter how hard I fight for hope of fixing this -- it won't happen. It's futile to fight, in this case.

And yet, and yet... there's that hope. That naturally shiny thing that the fairy tales have carved into me, and that little silver life line that Han has thrown to me by saying that he would like to come back to me and that he still loves me. The pessimist in me knows that that is probably not true. But that isn't enough to severe that life line. Because I hope what he said is true.

So is it time for Don Quixote to lay down his spear and set aside his armor and renounce his battles for love and goodness and the victory of all that is right? Or does he continue battling to keep the hope of those things alive?

<3 o.