Resonance

I was reading Ben Okri's Booker Prize-winning yarn In Arcadia (2002), when I had to stop to reread and reread a passage that so thoroughly struck me:

"If you believe in something, your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivete will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means that you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, till only the skeleton of your dream is left...

The world--which is to say the powers that be--would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all.

That's the world. Take it from me."

It struck me because I can relate to it, having experienced recent loss and disappointment myself. And it struck me because it's a reminder of a world as it shouldn't be, of a world as it shouldn't seem. To me, or to anyone.

No, Mr Narrator. That is not how it is. Existential moping is so 1999.

I always find it special when our media, while pushing us outwards, taking us to new places and surprising us with the unfamiliar, can just as quickly shift trajectory and draw us back inwards, holding up a mirror and asking us how we see ourselves. Our media are part of our very own 'working through', as we confront our fears (just as my tarrying with In Arcadia) and affirm our longings (just as I silently applauded Isla Fisher's testimonial in Confessions of a Shopaholic).

So when was the last time you were struck by a film, or a book, or a play, and why? :)