Well.
To be honest I don't feel like blogging today. A short one, then. (you can tell I'm cheating by the use of spaces)
I went to my first book club meeting this week, and it was pretty interesting. One thing that I want to pick up on, is that what you like says more about you than the object of your favor. Does that make sense? Like john green says that your favourite quotes say more about you then the quotes themselves.
We discussed Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons, which is a collection of short stories all about... you guessed it, Mother/Son relationships. In some cases the sons were gay, but that is not the point! xD The point is that we had to go round the circle, saying what our favourite stories were. One person said that their favourite story was the one that featured a son using music as a connection with his mother. He understood music, and the harmony/ melody the relationship the author discussed. Another person said their favourite story was one where the protagonist stole famous paintings, but had a laissez faire attitude towards the non-monetary value of the paintings. That person enjoyed appreciating art himself.
My favourite story featured a mum driving her son home from the hospital, where he was just discharged from being hospitalised for clinical depression. I could relate to the son a lot; or the mother, rather: she knew that the sickness was something that he couldn't help, but at the same time she thinks that depression was this gift that he kept for himself; as if he was indulging himself by not doing anything.
Listening to everyone talk about which parts they liked and which parts they didn't, reminded me of john's idea. And it was true, I guess. I couldn't tell about the others, because I had only just met them, but I could tell for me. And also because the other people seemed/ WERE so different, demographically speaking, there must have been a deeper reason for their preferences. Now that I'm thinking of it, it's oddly calming to know that we were different, even though on the outside we had come together for the same purpose, and with seemingly similar personal backgrounds. We all had mothers, and we all had could relate to the sons in the story in some way, but what was important was that there were different parts that stood out to us. That spoke to us because of our identities and our life experiences.
I like that about people. I like that sometimes we are the same, yet different. So different and complex and special.
It was also comforting to to meet them, in a way. Comforting that I was welcomed, and it was nice to know that there were different people, kind of like I was different. But they were happy with their jobs, the relationships they were in. For a long time, I thought this was an impossibility. But here they were, happy. Rejoicing in their uniqueness and leading contented lives. It was inspiring; that they were struggling/ had struggled in spite of society, but they had made their lives their own. It helps me believe that I can have a future too, no matter how much I have to struggle. I feel less afraid of embracing my uniqueness.
Also they were totes comfortable with saying "fuck". That was such a relief.
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