Reality > Fiction
Posted by Sara Emeli Amber on Thursday, November 1, 2012
Under: Rants
A sure-fire sign that someone reads too much fiction is that they believe that every little thing is important. Example: You and your friend are at the mall. Your friend is wearing a shirt which boasts a black cat and a quote from Edgar Allen Poe on perversity. A tall, attractive guy with black hair and snakebites walks up, says that he loves Poe's story The Black Cat, and proceeds to give your friend his number. Before she can put the number into her phone, but after the guy leaves, she accidentally drops his number into a food disposal. Is she distressed? Of course not. Because she knows (after reading so many love stories) that she will see him again in a bookstore in the Edgar Allen Poe section, explain what happened, and then he will take her out to see a lovely, gory horror movie and then they will walk into the sunset and slowly die together (very romantically) as they bleed to death by wounds given them by an outraged ax-murderer.
Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but the point is clear. We've been raised in a world where every interaction is vital to this story plot that we've worked up in our head, and then nothing happens and we're just like... wait... what? I met a guy at camp. He really liked me. He was funny, too, and a surfer. And he gave me his email address, which I lost, and I never talked to him again. Tragic, right? No, not really. Because I didn't get the ending I wanted, I was able to see that the guy was a dork, and that it was mercy that I lost his email. (The guy was... yeah.) The other day as I left the gym, some guy started talking to me and asked if I would text him if he gave me his number. I said no because I didn't know him. I saw him again the next day at the gym, and, hey! Guess what! Nothing happened! People don't include pointless encounters in books because if they did, there would be a ton of random conversations not applicable at all to the plotline. You, however, do not live in a book. Don't overthink. Realize that some things come to nothing. Don't dwell on the tall, dark and handsome stranger watching you from across the library. Realize that it's okay to move on. And then, live your life, rather than your storyline.
Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but the point is clear. We've been raised in a world where every interaction is vital to this story plot that we've worked up in our head, and then nothing happens and we're just like... wait... what? I met a guy at camp. He really liked me. He was funny, too, and a surfer. And he gave me his email address, which I lost, and I never talked to him again. Tragic, right? No, not really. Because I didn't get the ending I wanted, I was able to see that the guy was a dork, and that it was mercy that I lost his email. (The guy was... yeah.) The other day as I left the gym, some guy started talking to me and asked if I would text him if he gave me his number. I said no because I didn't know him. I saw him again the next day at the gym, and, hey! Guess what! Nothing happened! People don't include pointless encounters in books because if they did, there would be a ton of random conversations not applicable at all to the plotline. You, however, do not live in a book. Don't overthink. Realize that some things come to nothing. Don't dwell on the tall, dark and handsome stranger watching you from across the library. Realize that it's okay to move on. And then, live your life, rather than your storyline.
In : Rants
Tags: books life random