One morning when I was driving to work, I heard the radio DJ
commenting about how a number of
the secondary school students aspired to become actors and actresses and if
only these young kids knew how difficult it would be for them to get acting jobs and get paid. I guess we
all may dream about what we want to do when we grow up and when we are old
enough, most of us will get real and know that we need a job that pays our rent
and our material needs.
I came across an official receipt
for some tuition fee I paid for my daughter several years ago. The receipt was
issued by Be Smart Learning Centre.The name is representative of all parental
hopes for their children. It is the parents’ fear that their children cannot
get into a good school and obtain some academic qualifications from reputable
higher institutions and accredited universities so these children are sent
to classes and tuition centres
that apparently provide them the competitive edge to excel in examinations. Not
every child is an ivy league candidate but it is important that the child gets
a good college degree. The grown ups who think they know better debate about
the kind of college degree which will set the child off to a career path that should guarantee material success. Amidst all the mad
chase, we overlook the essence of learning and growing. In reality, grown ups
do not know better.
When I was a student, I used to
burn midnight oil and did all the cramming on the eve of the exam. Some friends
used to say that they had not started their revision or they had not been
studying. The thing is if you have not, you ace it, you must be smart. You do
not want to be known as the one who has been mugging and not done well. I find
that if you put in little efforts you might scrape through or even get lucky
and score well. But the stuff you learn will be thrown out of the window after
you have handed in the papers. Often, you do not need to know all the stuff you
learn in school when you are a grown up, but it is still a waste of the
opportunity while you have the chance to study them.
Because I did it at the very last
minute just to get through the examinations, I did not remember all that
biology, geography and history I studied in school. I learnt nothing. It was a waste of the opportunity but when I
was young, I did not know then. It was immaturity.
Ideally we should focus on
shaping each individual child into a compassionate and considerate human being
and not just gearing the child to perform well at qualifying examinations as
schools do not prepare us for life paradoxes and uncertainties. If only we
could spend more time and energy cultivating tolerance and nurturing empathy,
there might be better understanding of the human race and amongst the people from all walks of life.
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up The Goldfinch from WH Smith
at Heathrow and set out to read it on the flight journey home. It is a
compelling tale written by Donna
Tartt click who tells the story in the voice of Theo Decker about his
growing years since the bombing accident when he was aged thirteen. On that
fateful day, Theo and his mother visited the Met in New York and his mother was
killed in the explosion. Theo who had survived the accident suffered post
traumatic stress disorder and the tale is about his longing for his mother and his relationship with his reckless,
largely absent father. The
accident, his longing for his mother
and his random act of
picking up the small but priceless painting in the panic of his
escape influenced the psyche of
his growing years and his actions for years to come.
The fiction is narrated in Theo
Decker’s voice and here is one
narration that describes his tragic feeling about life that seems to be devoid of any meaning.
“Squirming babies and
plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh
isn’t he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground
with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages
and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee
in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed
satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that,
sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat
more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted
gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga
and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the
news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and
pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and
supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and
traveled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices,
flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication
and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it:
where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you
could put on it . It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the
office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement
party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the
nursing home. It was better never to have been born- never to have wanted
anything, never to have hoped for anything…..”
Theo questions,
Only what is that thing? Why
am I made the way I am ? Why do I care about all the wrong things. And nothing
at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way:how can I see so clearly
that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet – for me, anyway – all
that’s worth living for lies in that charm?
A great sorrow, and one that I
am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We
can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people.
We don’t get to choose the people we are.
Because – isn’t it drilled
into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the
culture-? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to
Mister Rogers, it’s a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low:
when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what’s right for us? Every shrink,
every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: “Be yourself.”
“Follow your heart.”
Only here’s what I really,
really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a
heart that can’t be trusted --? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable
reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from
health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all
the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare
of ruin, self immolation, disaster? Is Kitsey right? If your deepest self is
singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire ,is it better to turn away?
Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming
at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the
norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and
steady career advancement, the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with
the promise of being a better person? ……………….
Monaco,October 2012 |
The
Goldfinch deals with life paradoxes and is another exquisite piece
of writing that I am glad to have read recently.
Amsterdam , September 2008 |
I have seen this on the shelves and wondered if it's worth picking up. Seems a little morose and introspective but the writing is wonderful. Thanks for the review.
ReplyDeleteHi Julie thank you for reading my post. I was glad to have picked up The Goldfinch .It is a poignant tale and the writing is beautiful. Cheers:-)
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