It's all silly and dumb
Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in books | Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010
I don't really know why I post about this, but here's a piece of Vonnegut's Jailbird that I personally found amusing. I'm not very sure if the deep content is what I'm figuring it to be, or if It has anything to do with what I think. Just read it and find meaning, if you're willing to.
"I feel so silly," said Sarah."You don't believe you're beautiful?" said her grandmother."I know I'm beautiful," said Sarah. "I look in a mirror, and I think, 'I'm beautiful.'""What's wrong then?" said her grandmother."Beautiful is such a funny thing to be," said Sara. "Somebody else is ugly, but I'm beautiful. Walter says I'm beautiful. You say I'm beautiful. I say I'm beautiful. Everybody says, 'Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,' and you start wondering what it is, and what's so wonderful about it."[...]"It's so silly," she said. "It's so dumb," she said."Perhaps you shouldn't think about it so much," said grandmother."That's like telling a midget to stop thinking about being a midget," said Sarah, and she laughed again."You should stop saying everything is silly and dumb," said her grandmother."Everything is silly and dumb," said Sarah"You will learn differently as you grow older," her grandmother promised."I think everybody older just pretends to know what's going on, and it's all so serious and wonderful," said Sara. "Older people haven't really found out anything new that I don't know. Maybe if people didn't get so serious when they got older,we wouldn't have a depression now"
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Isn't it all silly and dumb? Isn't it all so light, so unbearable and non-transcendental? All this social constructions that hold together out little beloved world as we know it, aren't they the most silly and unimportant of things in the universe?
Also, about older people pretending to have answers, that's something I've come to agree with. Growing up I always had all these questions about existence and explanations for things I couldn't understand. Grown-ups seemed to deal with those things just fine, as if it was very clear to them, as if the answers of the universe revealed themselves just with time. They made me believe so.
And you go on thinking that.
Until, of course, you notice that in case they're wondering the same, they've been just as scared and confused as you've been (or worse), they just learn how to ignore it. Or deal with it. The things, I think, is that in the end, we're all just taller children.
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And it's dumb... thinking of you like a __________
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