I believe that
kindness, social grace and civic consciousness can be taught just like how
Maths, biology, chemistry and languages are taught in school. Although not
everyone can master languages and be scientists, everyone should be able to
learn the basic rules about compassion, cleanliness, thoughtfulness and
etiquettes. However in reality, respect, kindness and thoughtfulness somehow
elude us when we go about our daily activities particularly when life becomes
too busy and the demands of everyday life is taking a toll on us. Often when we
are so zealous in guarding our own interest that we are oblivious to the other
people and their needs, we only pay attention to how we can reach our
destination in the shortest time possible or how we can complete a task with
as few disruptions as possible so
that we can move on with other aspects
of our lives.
To a large
extent, everyone should focus on his or her own interest to begin with because
if you do not learn to take care of yourself, you may become a burden to the
people who care about you. We know that we have to take care of ourselves
because it is so rare that anybody can do anything for you when you are unhappy
about your life. Many people only care about reaping the most for themselves
and you know that if you are not careful, you may be taken advantage of and you
may subsequently become resentful when you feel cheated or shortchanged.
Sometimes our fear of being victimized make us go a little overboard .It has
taken me decades to finally acknowledge that few people think too much about
the interest of others let alone
examining their thoughts or reflect about
why they do things the way they have done and why they say certain
things and what they have said to others.
I notice that
unhappy people tend to be spiteful and their words can be unkind and curt. I
also notice that people have a tendency to expect certain kind of behaviour
from certain people who are considered successful and they are pleasantly
surprised when these people turn
out to be kind and modest. Why should we not expect that everyone to be kind
and modest? Whether we are happy or unhappy, I believe that everyone could find
joy in one way or another. Maybe if we
appreciate that everyone is coping with his or her own situation, we
will give a little more thoughts about the others and try to think of ourselves
less. When you think of yourself less does not mean you think less of
yourself. The problem is we tend
to think of ourselves more and more and about how we fare in the eyes of others
around us. Very often in our insatiable quest for material comfort and success,
we look away from the injustice and sufferings around us.
In Les Belles Images written
by Simone de Beauvoir
translated by Patrick O’Brian, the protagonist Laurence and her
husband Jean-Charles are very protective of their daughters who are not allowed
to watch television for fear that they will find out about unhappy and ugly things in the real world that
might upset them. But their twelve-year- old, Catherine has made a new school
friend who is worldly, a child beyond her age and she tells Catherine sad
stories that happen around the world. When Catherine starts having nightmares
and ask questions about the world, Laurence has to figure out how to explain
unhappiness to Catherine and to get her daughter to accept the fact that there
are unhappy people and to believe that they will stop being unhappy.
‘I tell you what , we will talk
about it tomorrow .But if you know any unhappy people we’ll try and do
something for them. You can treat sick people, give poor ones money-there are
masses of things you can do .’
‘Are there really? For everybody?’
‘Dear me, I should cry all day
long if there were people whose unhappiness couldn’t be cured at all. Tell me
all about it tomorrow. And I promise you we’ll find something to be done. I
promise,’ she repeated, stroking Catherine’s hair. ‘Go to sleep now, darling.’
Laurence knows
that is a very rash promise, and her daughter’s questions make her
evaluate the good life she leads
and how she has grown to be
detached from the happenings around the world.
Here is
another snippet of the
conversation between mother and daughter.
“ Brigitte says that when people
are wicked it’s because they are unhappy. Except the Nazis.”
“She told you that?” Laurence
squeezed Catherine tighter. “No Granny won’t grow wicked. But take care when
you see her ; don’t look as though you knew she was unhappy.”
“I wish you weren’t unhappy
either, so I do,’ said Catherine.
Laurence
agonizes about what to tell her daughter. The narration sometimes is in the
third person and at other times is in the first person.
‘ Essentially what Lucien said
and what Papa said coincided. Everyone was unhappy : everyone could find
happiness –the one amounted to the other . Can I explain to Catherine that
people are not so unhappy as all that since they cling to life? Laurence
hesitated. It’s the same as saying that unhappy people are not unhappy. Is that
true? Dominique’s voice all broken with sobs and cries : she loathed her life,
but she had not the slightest wish to die : that is unhappiness. And again
there is that emptiness, that void which freezes your heart and which is worse
than death although you are preferring it to death so long as you do not kill
yourself. I went through that five years ago and I still feel t
he horror of it . And the fact is that people do kill themselves –he asked for bananas and a towel - because in reality there does exist something worse than death. That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide : not the frail corpse hanging from the window- bars but what happened inside that heart immediately before.’
he horror of it . And the fact is that people do kill themselves –he asked for bananas and a towel - because in reality there does exist something worse than death. That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide : not the frail corpse hanging from the window- bars but what happened inside that heart immediately before.’
Laurence sometimes feels like she does not
belong to the group she is with. She is married to an ambitious architect who wants to send Catherine to a psychologist when her grades at school drop. One day in
order to avoid running into the
cyclist who shot in front of her
car, Laurence crashed their car in the ditch. Her husband was upset with her for
wrecking the car that would cost a large sum of money to repair. Laurence later
reflected that Jean- Charles had something to cross about as he was sitting in
the suicide seat. Laurence's mother, Dominique who is in her early 50s is not impressed with her
father who has not advanced in his legal career. After their divorce, Dominique
had a suitor who subsequently left her for a 19-year- old and she was devastated
despite having a successful career. To Dominique, a woman is nothing without a wealthy man in her arm.
Les Belles Images is a
simple story about an upper middle class family living in Paris in the 60s. I
read the book in the 80s and picked it up again over the weekend. Despite the
fact that we are in the new millennium , the story in some respects are still
very much relevant. The story is
about how we may be at risk of becoming vacuous and vain as we chase after progress and material goals.