Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

In the Prologue, Goff primes his audience and sets the stage for the course of the book by using informal language to describe highly significant events. The impact of this tone suggests to the reader that the author is going to deal casually with subjects of real gravity, implying Goff has a firm handle on these matters and readers should trust his judgment. This clever use of language also implies that certain things are true and certain perceptions are correct. He combines unusual word choices to confront conventional viewpoints. For instance, he describes housing projects as “dark and scary and filled with beautiful, scary people”(viii).

In referencing the people who staffed the kitchen, Goff says they are “guys who needed a fresh start and […] women who have confronted some of life’s biggest challenges with courage and hope” (viii). This description foreshadows two of Goff’s literary characteristics. First, he tends to treat women and men differently. Virtually all his friends and collaborators are men. While he offers greater deference to women, he is also more like to mock, tease, and manipulate them with charm. This is apparent when he describes his childhood piano teacher (77), two elderly women he fools into thinking he is a wax statue (60), and his wife (13). Second, Goff’s vignettes often leave out some elements of a story; here, he points out the women at the restaurant faced these challenges, as opposed to the men, without saying what they are, thus leaving the reader to fill in the blanks.

Chapter 1 is a sermon on loving unlikeable individuals, particularly those who induce fear. Goff triangles himself and his readers off against individuals whom he finds frightening. He describes Jesus in familiar, humanistic terms, implying that Goff has an understanding of Jesus’s motives and his actions (5-6).

This chapter reveals Goff’s tendency to create catchy, picturesque, and simplistic proverbs. He writes: “Burning down other people’s opinions doesn’t make us right. It makes us arsonists” (4); and, “We’ll become in our lives what we do with our love” (4). These proverbs tend to come at the end of a point Goff is making about a certain topic. He seldom connects the maxim to his argument and, in all cases, is more focused on the eloquence and presentation of his words than the logic of what he says. In Goff’s own words, “As a lawyer, I win arguments for a living” (7).

Chapter 2 sees the topic change from fearing other individuals to fearing life events. This chapter and its companion, Chapter 3, reveal a depth of emotion, true friendship, and intimacy from the author. Goff seeks to couch the episodes of his neighbor’s sickness in relatively dispassionate terms that are belied by his actions.

This chapter also displays one of his signature acts of impulsivity, the spontaneous purchase of walkie-talkies, that he purports to have enabled his neighbor Carol to push aside her fear of terminal cancer. He writes, “These walkie-talkies didn’t fix her cancer. Something much bigger happened—she wasn’t afraid anymore” (16). Goff equates the humorous distraction of the gift to the alleviation of Carol’s fear. While that may indeed be the case, the reader is hearing it from Goff and not from Carol and therefore has no clear evidence of the validity of his assertion. Throughout the book, Goff abruptly engages in unexpected actions that catch the individuals he is dealing with off-guard. Often, as here with Carol, he equates his impulsive behavior with love. While this may be Goff’s intention, there is seldom a clear indication his behavior is accepted as compassionate love.

Chapter 3 builds upon the story of the neighbor Carol as she dies of cancer. Goff sets the stage by describing the interaction between Jesus and the teacher of the law found in the 10th chapter Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus issues what has traditionally been referred to as the Great Commandment: Love one’s neighbor as oneself. Goff reflects on how God has made the earth one big neighborhood and thus everyone is our neighbor. He expresses that we need to start loving our neighbors close at hand, which will teach us how to love everyone. Jesus, Goff argues, has given us no real instructions or priorities when it comes to loving. He points out the difficultly and reluctance we experience when it comes to loving our neighbors and says, “Only Jesus has the power to call out of us the kind of courage it takes to live the life He talked about” (20). As his example of embodying neighborly love, he describes the way his neighborhood embraced and pampered Carol until the time of her death.

In Chapter 4, Goff extends the metaphor of loving one’s neighbor to loving those who are not neighborly, specifically focusing upon the homeless man who lounged in his truck daily for several months while Goff was at work. Goff cautions readers that the key to successfully loving such unlovable, seemingly unworthy individuals is not challenging their behavior but rather describing what you see them becoming. Once the homeless man trashes Goff’s truck and abandons it, Goff says this was because the man felt ashamed of what he had done (34-35). However, he does not examine other possibilities, such as that the man was jealous and resentful; just as Goff assumes he understands the motives and actions of Jesus and God, so he thinks he understands the motivation of the homeless man. Similarly, Goff doesn’t do much self-examination about his motives and actions. Throughout, he assumes he understands himself and his motives, glorying in his unexamined impulsiveness. The ultimate disposition of the yellow truck reveals this tendency. Ultimately the truck was stolen. Because he had taken such poor care of the vehicle, never changing the oil for over 120,000 miles, it was in poor condition. When it was recovered by the police, Goff no longer wanted it (35-36). Regarding his treatment of the truck, Goff, rather than addressing the possibility that he was irresponsible, labels his actions as a typical human response to being told how to act. He writes: “Even though I knew my dad was right […] I still wouldn’t have done it […]. Most people don’t want to be told what they want” (30).