“…Meaningless, Consumer-Driven Lives…”
One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Ten Things I Hate about You. I try to kid myself that it’s a classic, a remake of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, and features solid performances from solid and respected actors… but it really is a bit like Clueless: regurgitated plot nearly unrecognizable as a rendition of the original because of the attempts to entertain the dull masses with copious amounts of bawdy humor, and I love it anyway.
But I digress, I use this quote, because for the most part, it encapsulates how I feel about my own life, and how it’s become dangerously parallel to my prior complaints about the, “dull masses.” In short, I feel I’ve become dull. I feel my life has been so consumed with the regular, everyday (for lack of a better word) drudgery-the housework, work, studying and researching to teach, making dinner, checking email, replying to email, television, conversations with the uninspired-that I, too, have become unintelligible and uninspired. I’ve not read anything that I would call “quality” literature in ages. I’ve been reading manuals by the insipid trying to tell me how to be a more effective teacher, when all they can suggest is ways to undermine and underestimate my students’ intelligence. I’ve read Harry Potter, which is very enjoyable, but I wouldn’t quite call it quality, thought-provoking- or even masterfully written literature. I believe I’ve forgotten how to read for enjoyment. The last pleasure reading I read all the way through was The Deathly Hallows… and that was when it came out.
I miss Walker Percy, Dickens, the Brontes, and Shakespeare. I miss thought-provoking literature that doesn’t ignore or cover up the void inside of us all- the great pit of nothingness with a gravity so strong that it threatens to swallow us whole if we’re not careful- but revels in it, that smiles and taunts it, that recognizes it as a necessity of existence which makes our joys more precious, puts our sorrows into perspective, and gives our fears validation.
And the worst part of this is that I know I say this now, and will probably go home to my husband who will play video games, and the dogs will need looking after, and the house will have a layer of dust that they brought in from the yard, and dinner will need cooking, and the worries of tomorrow problems will force me into a futile attempt to lessen them, and I will ignore my old school friends and the treasures unread hanging in the office for another night.
