Reflections of one Franny Glass
I feel out of joint with life lately. Like a gangly child with too-big elbows in a crowded hallway. The world’s Matilda, only without Miss Honey to give me a copy of Moby Dick and make sense of it all.
After all this social prowess I gained over the summer--this ability to talk to people. Or, the confidence to recognize that I have always had the ability to talk to people. After all that gain, it seems to have only led to a new kind of loneliness. I find I don’t understand them. I don’t understand their petty lives, their meaninglessness, their selfishness. Their cycle of drinking and laughing and talking and drinking and laughing and talking on and on and on. I look at people and I see nothing worth liking.
And turning inward, I find much of the same, although I am much, much better at justifying my own petty selfishness. I am quite skilled at giving it meaning. But I am aware of the falseness of this. Painfully aware when I force myself to face it. Sometimes it is just easier to ignore.
And I find it curious how easy it is for me to generalize what humanity is like and to somehow separate that from the few members of the human race that I do like. Or even the many members of the human race I do like. I like my friends. My family. Several of my co-workers. My students, ultimately. People I see in the grocery store, at the movies, in a cafe. I even love some of them.
But when I examine it, I sometimes wonder if what I love isn’t ultimately self-gratifying. I love the way they make me feel. Or some side of myself that they bring out. Or the way they see me as I feel I really am. It always, always circles back to me me me.
And this is my ultimate dissatisfaction. I worry about this for the whole human race. All of these constructs we create of “goodness”--our moral and ethical codes and even beyond that, just our sense of love--ultimately seem to serve our purpose as a race. They keep us functioning, alive, reproducing, well. We worry about the environment because if we destroy it, we are destroying ourselves. We offer money to charity to save other humans, ourselves. It always, inevitably, comes back to humanity. To ourselves. And I can’t help but wonder if that is enough.
After all this social prowess I gained over the summer--this ability to talk to people. Or, the confidence to recognize that I have always had the ability to talk to people. After all that gain, it seems to have only led to a new kind of loneliness. I find I don’t understand them. I don’t understand their petty lives, their meaninglessness, their selfishness. Their cycle of drinking and laughing and talking and drinking and laughing and talking on and on and on. I look at people and I see nothing worth liking.
And turning inward, I find much of the same, although I am much, much better at justifying my own petty selfishness. I am quite skilled at giving it meaning. But I am aware of the falseness of this. Painfully aware when I force myself to face it. Sometimes it is just easier to ignore.
And I find it curious how easy it is for me to generalize what humanity is like and to somehow separate that from the few members of the human race that I do like. Or even the many members of the human race I do like. I like my friends. My family. Several of my co-workers. My students, ultimately. People I see in the grocery store, at the movies, in a cafe. I even love some of them.
But when I examine it, I sometimes wonder if what I love isn’t ultimately self-gratifying. I love the way they make me feel. Or some side of myself that they bring out. Or the way they see me as I feel I really am. It always, always circles back to me me me.
And this is my ultimate dissatisfaction. I worry about this for the whole human race. All of these constructs we create of “goodness”--our moral and ethical codes and even beyond that, just our sense of love--ultimately seem to serve our purpose as a race. They keep us functioning, alive, reproducing, well. We worry about the environment because if we destroy it, we are destroying ourselves. We offer money to charity to save other humans, ourselves. It always, inevitably, comes back to humanity. To ourselves. And I can’t help but wonder if that is enough.