“It’s
just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”
This is my
favorite quote and it’s something Bill is saying to Charlie. I explained it in
my previous post, but this is a really interesting observation. Sometimes I
would use thought as an excuse to not be productive. Thought really is a
passive leisure activity though, like TV. You may be learning (or not) from
your thoughts, but if you don’t do anything with your thoughts, they’re
useless. If you want to be a philosopher, write your ideas down and share them
with the world.
“’He’s
my whole world.’
‘Don’t
ever say that about anyone again. Not even me.’ That was my mom.”
This is
reflective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Her philosophy says that we
should live for no man and ask no man to live for us. In a way, she’s right. We
should live for ourselves. However, you can’t take this philosophy too far like
Howard Roarke did. The reason I hated “The Fountainhead” and stopped in the
middle of it is because Keating couldn’t make decisions himself and Roarke was
a cold rapist (yes, he did rape his girlfriend) that needed to learn to
interact with people. You can’t live like Howard Roarke. You have to interact
with people if you ever want to reach your goals. Despite what Kant would have
us believe, it’s impossible to NOT ever use people as a means to an end. Just
understand that you have to help others reach their goals too.
You should live
for yourself, but live through the
world. That’s participating in life. You can’t cut yourself off from people
like Roarke did and call that living.
Okay, soapbox
over! J
“Charlie,
we accept the love we think we deserve.”
It’s true that
if we have lousy self-esteem, we’re going to get lousy lovers. I don’t know…I
think love is more complicated than this. Sometimes it’s not about self-esteem,
it’s about how you can love someone all you want, but you can’t make them love
you back. However, what I think this is saying is that we deserve someone who
loves us back, but if we don’t let that person that doesn’t love you back go,
then we can’t ever find or see the person who does love us back. If we can’t
have that person who doesn’t love us back, then we go without love or we settle
for second best. What’s important though, is that you tell/show the people you
love that you love them. It’s like what Sam was saying to Charlie at the end of
the book. If they don’t love you back, so be it. At least you know. There’s
other fish in the sea, and you can let this one go.
“I
just think it’s bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees
the girl is better than the girl actually is.”
I thought this quote
was really interesting. I agree that the beauty of photographs and art comes
from the subjects and not the artist. A camera lens doesn’t create beauty, it
captures it in a unique way. We all offer different perspectives of a person or
object, but the person/object being observed is beautiful, not the way we
observe them/it.
“I
just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old
photographs. And I hope that they believe me.”
Happiness is
only relevant if it’s what you’re feeling at the moment. You can’t compare it
to anything else. It’s easy to fall victim to nostalgia and believe that the
present has all these problems compared to the past, but the past had its
problems too.
The following quote is paraphrased. “You know that
moment when you feel not alone? When you understand that other people think the
same thing about a person you love, that many other people have read the same
books that you have and come to the same understanding about them? Sometimes it’s
comforting, but sometimes it just pisses you off.
“I was very
grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I
think everyone is special in their own way. I really do.” –Charlie on being
called special. It’s interesting how sometimes we want to feel special and how
sometimes we want to feel connected. I noticed that people usually want to feel
connected about bad things (oh, other people have gotten in trouble, not just
me) and they want to feel special about good things (no one else feels the same
way that I do about The Fountainhead).
Sometimes the bad things just take over and you need to be reminded about the
good things that make you special.
“And
even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact
that you have what you have. Good and bad.”
Everybody
suffers and no suffering is ever trivial. There may be kids in China dying of
starvation, but you still have to take care of yourself and make your life
better.
Here’s
a really interesting poem: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1035166-the-poem-what-did-it-mean-to-charlie
And
here is my response: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/msysip.htm
Some people just never learn to deal
with their rock, I guess.
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