digitalphiltrum

three years ago i read a book called Waiting by Ha Jin. its a really interesting novel in that the main character spends the entire novel..well…waiting. and you, as a reader, therefore spend the entire novel waiting as well. and in the end, the main character finds out that all he was waiting for all those years was more waiting.

have you ever noticed that the word waiting is one of those words that if you say it over and over again, it sounds really stupid?

anyway….so you get to the end of this novel, having waited for a full 280 pages or so for the happy ending that we are so accustomed to, only to find yourself made incredibly uneasy by the fact that there is no happy ending–in fact, there is no real ending at all. in the end, the main character is right back where he started.

now the book itself is very politically motivated. its actually about communist china during the 60′s and 70′s, but it presents its political lessons to you in the form of metaphors as you read a story about a man who doesnt really know what he wants. yeah, politics are all nice and all, but people would much rather hear about other people whos love lives are definitely much more messed up than their own…it makes us feel better about ourselves. this is why soap operas continue to be so popular.

i digress though…back to the book…

i have to admit though that the politics completely alluded me. what i got out of this book when i read it was the universality of the concept of “waiting”. when you think about it, we are all waiting…for something. we will spend our entire lives waiting for one thing or another, and each time we acquire what we were waiting for, we find something else to be waiting for. its like we just dont know how to be content, its not in our nature. we always think that what we are waiting for is that one last thing that will make everything complete – then I wont want anything else god, i promise! — only to find each time that what we wanted isnt exactly all we thought it would be. ironically enough, we spend our entire lives waiting on something that will help us acheive inner peace, only to discover in the end that it was all the waiting that kept us from it the whole time.

a professor at loyola once said that she only found happiness in her life when she stopped applying the word “when” to her life.

i will be happy when i graduate from school.

when i….

and so on. always waiting for something else. never being satisfied with what she had.

i dont know. i just got to thinking about all that because i looked at that book tonight on the bookshelf and remembered how frustrated it had made me when i read it because i felt like i had wasted an entire week of my life reading this stupid book only to find that it ends up right where it started. no resolution, no nothing. and i thought i had gained nothing. but — if i could feel so angry over having wasted an entire week of my life waiting for a happy ending that wasnt there — how angry could i be if i woke up one day and realized that i had wasted an entire lifetime away waiting on something that just never existed?

just some food for thought….

i read in the news this morning that the civil unrest that has plagued the suburbs of france for 10 days now spread to the city of paris itself last night as well as several resort areas. american tourists have been warned not to travel to france at this time and french leaders are scrambling to find some way to put an end to the arson, rioting and general chaos that has taken over the cities. now i dont know about you, but until the riots started, i had no idea that france was facing so many issues. according to the multiple online new sources that are my daily morning reading, the people rioting are the suburban, lower class, youth. think about the last part of that — youth. kids who arent even old enough to sign their own legal paperwork are destroying cities in france and because of the massive number of them, police cannot gain control of the problem. first of all, id like to say that i dont think rioting is a good choice in any situation. when it involves violence, people get hurt, usually innocent people, and thats just wrong. however, i see why they are doing it. in their minds, they have no other choice. these people are young and poor, some unemployed, and most of at least one minority group. who gives a shit about them? i mean really–do you think any white, rich males, the ones with the power, care about small suburban areas that are plagued with poverty and discrimination? how many of us even know where these areas are? until a hurricane rips up the area and the government fails to respond or until two teenagers die running from the police and their peers decide that is the last straw? this is france we are talking about, a country very different from ours in so many ways, but when it comes to issues of race, class and gender discrimination, its a universal problem. i feel awful for saying it, but what other choice did they have? theyre just kids. kids with no money and no power who feel forgotten and abused. and for the most part — they are. i still think rioting was the wrong decision. but coming together as a mass of people is the absolute right thing to do.

my point behind all this? dont feel so secure. this is not a french issue. this is a problem everywhere, and especially in america. there is no such thing as equality and we all know it. and its a fine fine line we walk. there might be a lot of upper-middle class, white, christian americans out there — enough certainly to control the majority vote in this country — but when the minorities see a reason to unite, the balance is easily upset.

the riots in france could have been avoided if someone had taken notice of and vowed to resolve the cause of the problems (poverty) and not just the effects (high crime areas).

sorry for the rant, but things like that just piss me off and i have to bitch.