By Jim Pruitt
Discovering the real you and growing from there is the best way to make healthy choices in life and consequently making a positive difference in your community.
That was the message author Jack Gantos had for the audience at a talk he gave at the Washington Street Education Center on Oct. 17.
Gantos came to talk about his book “Hole in My Life” which is this year’s community read through the 5 Healthy Towns.
“I was honest when I wrote this book,” Gantos said. “Honesty is appealing.”
The foundation chose Gantos’ book because it was a story that people would more likely relate to, Keegan Sulecki said. People can relate the story to the bad choices they may have made when they were younger, she said.
“It was a really well-written story about choices that maybe people could see reflecting back on their younger selves, Sulecki said, adding it “could maybe reflect on some of their own life choices that weren’t great.”
Gantos is a well-known author of books for children and adults. His story is one of someone who almost lost his life to drugs, but who used writing to come back to his community and share his success and failures with the world at large.
More than 50 people attended his talk and listened attentively for nearly 90 minutes as he explained how he writes, where he writes, how many times he was rejected before a publisher signed him.
But mostly Gantos drove home several messages that form the core of his belief system.
When it comes to choosing to read a book or consume illegal substances, always choose the book. Books make people more empathetic and thoughtful. When everybody is reading the same book, a chain forms linking them together and kindness springs up in everyone.
The way you act and talk when you are alone in your own house is the real you. This is a call for people to own the decisions they make when no is watching and to develop integrity so they act the same at home and in public.
Don’t give up. Not even after publishers have rejected your books 36 times, because they could say yes on your 37th attempt.
Don’t smoke marijuana. Gantos believes modern marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to worse drugs and destroys lives. The marijuana of today is more powerful than the pot of the early 1970s and has addictive properties that hook young people. The epidemic is so bad, that for a generation of young people, marijuana is their only drug of choice.
Gantos had to learn the hard way and that meant going to prison for running drugs.
Eventually, through his desire to write and complete his education, he was able to leave prison early and become a tenured professor and accomplished, husband and father.
He spends eight hours a day, 200 days a year working at two libraries in Boston on his books. He writes them out in long hand and then types them into his computer. He journals and gains inspiration from life.
After his workday is done, he goes home to his chores.
He also travels the country to tell his story and encourages people to make good choices.
If anyone gets anything out of his book, it’s this.
“If you think that doing drugs and making bad choices, does not really represent what you are, then you are really not being honest with yourself,” Gantos said. “You should define yourself by both your worst choices and your best choices. If you want to be a better person, then you have got to reduce the bad choices.
“You have to make a choice sometime in life to being a better person in your community, in your family and in your own heart.”
For more information about Gantos, please click here. For more information about the 5 Healthy Towns, please click here.
(If you would like to contact James Pruitt, please email him at [email protected].)
