I don't know the reason why people believe this story is incredulous or the characters are so cheesy or why is this teenage love book over-rated or all the hundred and forty six other reasons people give for disliking the book. I do admit that I love John Green's way of writing and thinking, but that's not why I like this book. I like it particularly for the cogent talks of Augustus Waters' or the vulnerable narcissism of Hazel Grace(at the start of he novel).
You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.
As we grow up, the societal influence fiddles with our own convictions and we start believing in what the society wants us to. We become involved with what others would think of us and misinterpret our happiness trying to seek it in what others would think of us. That was the first important lesson which I got by seeing Hazel. She is so involved with self and that is what I should seek happiness in. That's the secret to a happy and content line, self-awareness and having an idea of what you want is what will help you retain equanimity and rationality in thoughts perpetually.
The second best thing I got to see is the perspective of looking at circumstances. I believe metaphors are open to multiple interpretations and this is how I look at Augustus' following metaphor.
It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.
Here killing not necessarily means killing in fatal sense but any act that harms you or causes discomfort or annoys your mind or makes you loose your calm. Just as lighting the cigarette is in my control, the way these thoughts or circumstances affect me completely depends on how I choose to look at it. If empower my mind to exploit myself. I empower it to hurt or kill itself; Had I not lit the cigarette, had I chose not to affect myself in the way it did, I would not be killing myself, hurting myself or annoying myself.
If this is what girls think is cheesy, I guess, such girls are lacking thought and want to be impressed only by superficialities. It takes great thought to come up with such a deep metaphor.
And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.
This is a constant battle we fight daily. All our friends, family, parents, work and every single thing that we do in our daily life has no meaning in the cosmic sense of the universe. I know I will surely not exist after another fifty or sixty years but I want to etch a mark, that mark would be forgotten into oblivion which is its fate but I choose to ignore every single reality that makes me realize the finiteness of my life. I desire permanence in the heart of someone; in the universe, I want to be remembered, this feeling sticks with me perpetually and I guess with many of us; only that we promptly ignore it without giving a thought.
The younger generation, including me, would think of this thought as some high level bullshit and that coming out of the mouth of a 17 year old teenager even looks very incongruous but the 17 year old me could have never come up with that and that is taken by me as a kind of insult. I try to relate myself with him and when I think, that, all that Augustus does, is what I would have done in that age, but when he does something very different or says such deep stuff, then I try to caress my ego by saying that the kid is uttering shit and no one thinks so. This attitude that if I don't think so, it is natural that no one thinks so; is what is a characteristic trait of a teenager. He/She does not wish to look into the background of what the other person has did to get to where he is and to say what he's saying; just aptly disparage his credibility by making some preposterous assumptions. That might be a simple reason why any deep-rooted stuff said by a person can conveniently be framed as cheesy.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.___________________ Fault in our stars.
Forever is composed of many nows. _________________________ Paper Towns.
Combine the two novels and one can highlight the long-disputed argument about living life quantitatively or qualitatively.Between 0 and 2 there are an infinite numbers but most definitely a larger infinite numbers exist between 0 and 4, but one has to comprehend infinity before making such a statement. In a same way life for us all is infinite and we impart meaning to our infinity as to being qualitative or quantitative. Even he mentions the Zeno's paradox involving Achilles and the tortoise race where after giving the tortoise a head-start of some finite distance, the warrior will never be able to beat the tortoise no matter how fast he runs than the tortoise.(For more details, click here).
The fundamental discrepancy here is whether time or distance is really a continuous variable and is it possible to discretize these variables. In much the same way, whether I can break the forever into bits of nows and enjoy every moment as it is ; or linger into the delusion of an eternal happiness and seek the same is the analogous discrepancy which I encounter in my daily life. Isn't it thoughtful of the author to make such statements and leave them to be decided by the reader?
I don't know what I believe Hazel; I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe but that has not been my experience.
How true! The disintegration of belief and knowing is a perpetual one and what arouses curiosity in me and puts actions into place to identify that belief and its veracity. I know belief does not need to be proved but then, that's my outlook, you are free to criticize. Although you don't know something, searching incessantly to find it out makes all the striving worth it. But you first need to believe in something and later try to confirm it. But you must have something to start with and that's where believing steps in. So, yeah, this split between belief and knowledge is a much needed thing and I disagree with the author that it is a kind of sad thing. See I have no point in criticizing some of his points, but where its due, credit should be given.
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