monoceros blogsRemember that little movie The Time Machine starring Guy Pearce and Thandie Newton, directed by H.G. Wells' great-grandson, Simon Wells? Or perhaps it was so small and poorly-reviewed that almost everyone missed it. In the movie, the inventor played by Guy Pearce builds a time machine to return to the past so he can save his fiancee, Emma, from death. But every time he rescues her, she dies in some other manner. If she evades the knife of a robber, she gets run over by a carriage and so on. Alexander Hartdegen, the inventor, keeps going back in time only to see her die over and over again. He finally realizes that he can only change the manner of her death, but not the fate of her death. She just wasn't meant to live.
Well, I kind of feel like Alexander Hartdegen, or is it Emma? Year after year, you keep trying to obtain a result, but then you see at last that the result is beyond you.
It's time for Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy:
"How badly we react to frustration is critically determined by what we think of as normal. We may be frustrated that it is raining, but our familiarity with showers means we are unlikely ever to respond to one with anger. Our frustrations are tempered by what we understand we can expect from the world, by our experience of what it is normal to hope for. We aren't overwhelmed by anger whenever we are denied an object we desire, only when we believe ourselves entitled to obtain it. Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground rules of existence.
We should be more careful. Seneca tried to adjust the scale of our expectations so that we would not bellow so loudly when these were dashed.
We must reconcile ourselves to the necessary imperfectibility of existence.
We will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful."
Posted by Monoceros at April 8, 2005 11:12 AMso true...
Posted by: tiggie at April 8, 2005 2:04 PMlovely words from de Botton. And yes, so true. sigh.
Posted by: dsd at April 8, 2005 8:35 PMThis book is changing my life...
Posted by: monoceros at April 9, 2005 4:34 PMJust had to jump in on this one. Terrific words, indeed. But I think that last line is not quite right? I'd say, "...expect too much," rather than "...be so hopeful." De Botton himself suggests the difference between hope and expectation. Hope is to desire and frustration (or disappointment) as expectation is to entitlement and anger. What he is probably suggesting, simply, is that our expectations or hopes should not be too high, just reasonable. Still, he is right to emphasize not being too hopeful, since a world of disappointment can break one's spirit in a way that a world of anger does not. "Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane." On the other hand, in the larger scheme of things, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." (Forgive me for putting those quotes next to de Botton's!)
Posted by: frank at April 10, 2005 2:56 AMActually "be so hopeful" does work, and "expect too much" just makes it sharper.
Cite your references! - as any writing instructor would exlaim in red ink. =) Shawshank Redemption?
Posted by: monoceros at April 11, 2005 10:55 PM