Bad Knees Blog - take 14: Feeling Philosophical

It's a week since I had the last of my treatment, at least the pokey kind. I'm wearing the brace, taking a daily collection of supplements, and I started physical therapy yesterday. I feel good and hopeful.

This is the point in the

story where the protagonist risks setting himself up for a fall. I'm okay with that possibility. As Cindy says, "At least we'll know."

I was thinking about when I began this blog, at least the bad knees portion. I've had a blog and neglected it for years. It took something special to get me motivated to actually write this one. It was the pain, of course, but that isn't the whole story. In fact, I've learned that pain, no matter how bad, is old news. People live with it, and most of them rarely let on that they hurt as much as they do, while the rest of us watch through skeptical eyes. You can't understand until you've been there, and I think there's something heroic about that stoicism, but as I teach my creative writing students, that's not enough for a good story. It's partly the possibility of a fall that makes a story and keeps the reader turning the page. But there has to be hope, the hope that the protagonist will rise up in the end and win the battle. Most important of all, we have to be able to relate because every good (and bad) main character is us on some level. I know a lot of people who are watching this very slow drama looking for hope, for some clue that there could be a chance that some things are not as finite as we think, and for that improbable possibility that there is a little magic out there.

I know I am.