The Underlying Messages Are So Different

I went to the grocery store last weekend and picked up a book from a three layered table display with books all piled on each layer, deliberately disorganized. I don’t want to mention the book’s name or the author’s name since I don’t like to say negative things about a living author. I prefer gentle stroking to feather ruffling. Anyway, I read several beginning pages today and can’t help laughing at the ridiculous messages embedded in the content. The book is intending to be funny and light hearted, but unfortunately the underlying philosophy is quite dark and unforgiving.  

I mean behind the nice sociable humorous exterior, I observe an inexhaustible pursuit of keeping things organized and ordered and compartmentalized even in those places where it is unnecessary to do so. So it is about a family, in which two siblings have some squabbles even if the two have gone through a lot together, like life-threatening emergencies, death or strippers. I just can’t understand why the word stripper should be tagged along here, who are in no way to cause death or emergencies.

Half a page later, the hospital is described as probably having gathered all the people who had suffered physical injuries from a disastrous love relationship such as a broken heart, a bruised ego, depression etc. I am not sure I agree with this since a hospital has all kinds of people from all walks of life. Injuries caused by human relationship consist only a very small portion of the hospital visits. Such a statement only indicates an anxiety about relationships that is completely out of proportion. It only shows a fear of relationships, and the fear causes the over-exaggeration, insecurity, and anxiety.

Another half page later, it is said that time and universe are both hard to navigate because they do not have order, they have no clearly marked beginning, middle, or ending. I guess life is just intrinsically being anarchical, messy, unordered, and meaningless, which is not to the liking of some people who prefer ordering above anything else. Actually, modern life has deliberately offered ordering and hierarchy and path. However, no matter how much we map the time and the universe, how strict a hierarchy we erect, how clearly a path we draw, insecurity is always there because we know that the real world is not supposed to be compartmentalized and severed like this. A lot of the delineations are just figments of our imagination. If we can just for one minute relinquish our pursuit of control and order, we can be much happier. However, it is not easy to be happy.