The Book of Charlie

by David von Drehle

swept into the tide of populism that took hold—a populism that was often anti-immigrant, closed-minded, and resentful of outside influences.

Charlie had no time for what-ifs:

For Charlie, what happened, happened. It was over and he could do nothing to change it.

Old school

The spunky boy who had to be tied to a tree still made occasional appearances in Charlie’s narration. But now he wore an armor of self-reliance.

surviving it, Charlie decided he could get through anything.

Charlie began reaching for the things he could control: his own actions, his own emotions, his own outlook, his own grit.

What characteristics allow some to experience trauma without being undone or diminished by it?

“Cultivating the ability to leave traumatic events behind” is another of the APA’s tools for resilience, and one way of doing so is to minimize their power to do lasting harm.

All memory is selective and every autobiography is abridged. What we leave out can be as revealing as what we put in.

Highways, service stations, truck plazas, motels, fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, suburbs: all were the product of this one invention, the affordable, dependable automobile. It was pure freedom, to go as one wished and stop as one would.

Our stories can be told in major or minor keys. We can dwell on defeat or on determination. We can stress setbacks or successes.

Optimists like Charlie refuse to sink into it, to hide in it, to surrender to darkness.

he had learned at an early age that life is never as sure as we might think, nor as hopeless as it might appear.

“Man postpones or remembers, he does not live in the present, but with reverted eyes laments the past, or heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.” We “cannot be happy and strong,” he concludes, until we live “in the present, above time.”