The glass is half full, but I'm pretty sure it's going to spill.
I generally assume that bad things are going to happen. Whenever I get a cold, I think grimly of the epidemiology thriller books I've read (is that a genre? It should be) that begin with an unsuspecting victim getting sniffles and then dying in some horribly painful and gory fashion on page five. While I think of myself as being a fairly cheerful person in my daily life, I am also deeply cynical and pessimistic. I'm not as judgmental and bitchy as I was in my dark teenage years, but I have grave doubts about humanity.
Recently I semi-read a book about the author's experience as a child soldier. Now I'm reading a fiction book (which I recommend, by the way) that touches on some historical episodes of large-scale human cruelty. And, of course, I have in the last few years read (and forced some of you to read) some other books about the things people do to eachother that we'd like to pretend can never happen to us. Anyway, I've been thinking about how we DO think that Bad Things on a large scale will never happen to us. They happen to people who live in other countries, ones where people live in little houses made out of unfamiliar materials. The thing is, these books I've been reading suggest to me that the people in those other countries also don't think that Bad Things on a large scale are going to happen to them, either, in their little houses. We all feel safe, mostly. Except me, apparently.
I'm not actually feeling particularly grim, in case you're worrying. This sort of outlook on life does allow for a certain amount of useful perspective. So I can't find an internship, and I am breaking my child's heart by making her leave daycare early tomorrow, just in time to miss their big Spring Parade about which she was super-excited ... hey, at least nobody's trying to kill us!
Recently I semi-read a book about the author's experience as a child soldier. Now I'm reading a fiction book (which I recommend, by the way) that touches on some historical episodes of large-scale human cruelty. And, of course, I have in the last few years read (and forced some of you to read) some other books about the things people do to eachother that we'd like to pretend can never happen to us. Anyway, I've been thinking about how we DO think that Bad Things on a large scale will never happen to us. They happen to people who live in other countries, ones where people live in little houses made out of unfamiliar materials. The thing is, these books I've been reading suggest to me that the people in those other countries also don't think that Bad Things on a large scale are going to happen to them, either, in their little houses. We all feel safe, mostly. Except me, apparently.
I'm not actually feeling particularly grim, in case you're worrying. This sort of outlook on life does allow for a certain amount of useful perspective. So I can't find an internship, and I am breaking my child's heart by making her leave daycare early tomorrow, just in time to miss their big Spring Parade about which she was super-excited ... hey, at least nobody's trying to kill us!
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