My Hero

There are a small handful of living people I would like to meet: Alice Walker, Arundhati Roy, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Timothy O'Brien. Friday night I had the amazing opportunity to meet Timothy O'Brien, author of one of my favorite books of all time: The Things They Carried, a book about the Vietnam War that I blogged about here. Incline Village read this book for their community read and invited O'Brien to speak at Sierra Nevada College for an evening.

Jason and I, giddy with excitement, arrived hours early. As soon as we arrived, we saw O'Brien from a distance in his trademark outfit of jeans, blazer and baseball cap. We were lucky enough to have him sign a copy of Going After Cacciato before the talk, which meant we got to have a short conversation with him about teaching his books.

The best part of the evening, however, was listening to O'Brien talk about his experiences. As I sit here and type this, I struggle because what I really want is to transport everyone I know back to that evening to hear O'Brien speak. I have written countless paragraphs that I subsequently deleted because I am unable to capture the essence of that evening.

So instead of trying, I will leave you with a quote that has echoed through my weekend: "Bullets and bombs can kill enemies. Yes, that is true. But bullets and bombs can can also manufacture enemies."