Not knowing anymore...
On Friday I finished reading "Rules of Attraction". Closing that book was intensely profound and frightening. It's been years since a book has effected me the way this one has. It is so honest, so brutal, so right on a multitude of levels that it distrubs me and yet that is exactly the reason I loved it so much, the reason I couldn't put it down toward the end and had to finish the last 60 pages all in one read despite having PoliSci reading due. The characters lives are so starkly empty and the desperation they feel in thier search for something (anything at all) that's meaningful is actually physically felt. What scares me the most is that I recognize my life in thiers, myself in them... So many things that I had thought were important now seem silly and petty, while so many other aspects of my life I disregarded are what's really valuable. The endless parties, the endless search for that someone? a hookup? the "One"? meaning? Yet how can we find meaning in something else if we can't figure outselves out. On that note, how can we expect someone else to fill that hole in us that we can't fill ourselves? It seems like that's a bit much to expect from a perfect stranger. All those nights in darkened rooms, awkwardly moving to music coming out of a laptop, under the influence of a toxin that forces us to loose our inhibitions so that maybe we have the courage to have a meaningless conversation with someone we forget in the morning...all those nights seem to blend together...nights of searching for that needle in a haystack in the dark when all we have to do is look at ourselves in the light. Why do we need to poison our bodies and obscure our thinking to meet the person we expect to save us from loneliness? What are we so afraid of? Seeing who we are in the harsh light of day...Yet looking at ourselves is frightening because when we find that maybe the fault for our loneliness lies with us, we are forced to try to change it and change is never a pain-free process. Instead, like ostriges we stick our heads into the sand and continue to search for that something we don't know, often missing the little things that really matter - the roomate on financial aid who who will offer to loan you money when you can't make next month's rent, the friend who will give up his night and stay with you while you're passed out from too much alcohol to make sure you're alright, the sibling who will hold you while you cry over a something as silly as a D on a test. The ideal we search for does not exist, but all the wonderful things that we miss so often do.
However, as long as we keep our heads in the sand and refuse to know ourselves, how can we know each other? Lauren, a character from "Rules of Attraction" sais this better than I ever could, " 'What does that mean? Know me?' I ask him. "Know me? No one ever knows anyone. Ever.You will never know me.' " How well do we know each other? Know the things that matter. I was close friends with Brandon for years and thought I knew his darkest secrets only to find out last November on my couch the biggest, most improtant secret of all...the cause to everything. This makes me wonder about people I love and know...how much of that is real? And if you can never know anyone, can you love them? And in the end, does it matter? Maybe we will never know ourselves and others fully because this identity we search for is a dynamic entity that can't be defined (kinda like light, which is at the same time both a particle and a wave and neither...I know I'm being nerdy, but this is the best analogy I can come up with) and the best we can do is take a chance and try to be happy with ourselves. Because if we can fill that hole ourselves, we actaully have a chance at real happiness with someone else. In fear of being cliche...this book that made me feel so hopeless and desperate has lead me back to a book that has changed my life, "Catch-22". Toward the end of the book, the main character Yossarian is planning on deserting and just before the leaves the following exchange takes place:
"How do you feel, Yossarian?"
"Fine. No, I'm very frightened."
"That's good," said Major Danby. "It proves you are alive..."
I find these lines so poigniant and always relevant. In the end of the book, the reader is left hanging and not knowing whether Yosarian has survived his incredibly dangerous and lengthy escape and yet we feel trully hopefull for the frist time in the book because he was finally living rather than existing. He had accomplished something the characters of "Rules of Attraction" had failed at misserably, something that so many of us are afraid to do. After I finished reading on Friday, I just sat there in Cafe Milano and thought, absorved everything around me and tried to look inside...I have been looking for the past three days. I found many things, some of which I like and some I don't, but something I know is that I don't want to have regrets. I don't want to regret not persuing my dreams accademically/carreer-wise or in my personal life. Yes, I may get hurt or be left defeated, but I would have tried...
This morning over breakfast, I had brought up Catch-22 and Yaniv told me that a few days ago he had seen someone walking around campus with a T-shirt that said "Yossarian Lives!"
However, as long as we keep our heads in the sand and refuse to know ourselves, how can we know each other? Lauren, a character from "Rules of Attraction" sais this better than I ever could, " 'What does that mean? Know me?' I ask him. "Know me? No one ever knows anyone. Ever.You will never know me.' " How well do we know each other? Know the things that matter. I was close friends with Brandon for years and thought I knew his darkest secrets only to find out last November on my couch the biggest, most improtant secret of all...the cause to everything. This makes me wonder about people I love and know...how much of that is real? And if you can never know anyone, can you love them? And in the end, does it matter? Maybe we will never know ourselves and others fully because this identity we search for is a dynamic entity that can't be defined (kinda like light, which is at the same time both a particle and a wave and neither...I know I'm being nerdy, but this is the best analogy I can come up with) and the best we can do is take a chance and try to be happy with ourselves. Because if we can fill that hole ourselves, we actaully have a chance at real happiness with someone else. In fear of being cliche...this book that made me feel so hopeless and desperate has lead me back to a book that has changed my life, "Catch-22". Toward the end of the book, the main character Yossarian is planning on deserting and just before the leaves the following exchange takes place:
"How do you feel, Yossarian?"
"Fine. No, I'm very frightened."
"That's good," said Major Danby. "It proves you are alive..."
I find these lines so poigniant and always relevant. In the end of the book, the reader is left hanging and not knowing whether Yosarian has survived his incredibly dangerous and lengthy escape and yet we feel trully hopefull for the frist time in the book because he was finally living rather than existing. He had accomplished something the characters of "Rules of Attraction" had failed at misserably, something that so many of us are afraid to do. After I finished reading on Friday, I just sat there in Cafe Milano and thought, absorved everything around me and tried to look inside...I have been looking for the past three days. I found many things, some of which I like and some I don't, but something I know is that I don't want to have regrets. I don't want to regret not persuing my dreams accademically/carreer-wise or in my personal life. Yes, I may get hurt or be left defeated, but I would have tried...
This morning over breakfast, I had brought up Catch-22 and Yaniv told me that a few days ago he had seen someone walking around campus with a T-shirt that said "Yossarian Lives!"