I’ve been struck recently by an advice column. On the normally rather flippant and offhand website of the gay/lesbian themed magazine ‘Out’, there is an advice column, written daily by a fantastic woman called Cynthia O’Neal. Every day she answers, seriously and thoughtfully, the questions of boys (and perhaps girls – though I’ve never read one) who write in with their quandries. It’s fantastic because it is unswervingly serious. She directs her readers to respond to events with a cool eye, not jumping to conclusions, but to see that long term sustainability often comes from simply sorting out one’s life in the present. ‘Later’ will deal with itself.
She’s fantastic, and though there is suprisingly little about her online, she is, I believe, a star. She’s the founder of a New York charity called Friends in Deed which helps those who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. She founded the group in conjunction with Director Mike Nichols and uses it to help, with group support session and one to one practical aid, those who often come to a realization that they are going to die. Founded in response to many of her friends coming down with and dying from AIDS, Nichols and O’Neal created an organization that acts as a support network, a friend in tough times for those who need it most. From Oprah.com, a quote from Nichols’ wife Diane Sawyer: “They will never be without someone to lean on or call in the middle of the night… and so many of these people have no other family but Cynthia and Friends In Deed” I’ve never before read an advice column that doesn’t have jokey responses or witty repartee, and hers is all the better for lack of it. You read her advice to strangers to find wisdom, not to find a bitchy snap-back, and I love her work all the more for it. It is the best thing about the magazine and there is clearly no shortage of questions from the public.
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