Feel like I'm the only one who's reading a book

The Hours by Michael Cunningham/Why religion matters

I remember the first time I read up on Virginia Woolf - oh my God, unbelievably dejecting. I don't think I've ever witnessed such a demoralized human being like Woolf (well, maybe except for Sylvia Plath - she delved pretty deep into her own suicide).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl08W86Oaqo <-- her exact suicide note (it's much more effective if you listen to it rather than read it), and probably my favorite movie.

However, this book wasn't written by Virginia Woolf, but I swear that rant was relevant.

The Hours is a novel founded on a book written by Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. I can't reveal the details of my own book without analyzing Mrs. Dalloway alongside it.

Damn, that means I'm practically doing two choice blog analyses.

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel surrounding the life of a single character, whose name is Mrs. Dalloway (shocker). It's important to know the context of this book, whose setting is placed in the post-World War 1 period in England. The plot is rather simple: Clarissa Dalloway is planning a party.

Yeah, I know. It practically screams "page-turner potential".

It's a difficult book to read. Not so much for any form of language she uses, but for the fact that the entire event is incredibly trite and lacking. We at first will look upon Mrs. Dalloway with disdain for being such a boring creature and, in almost all certainty, deprecate her God-forsaken dull life. But this is only the surface of the novel - the novel's true purpose is the emphasize and reveal such triteness. It focuses on the idea that the surface is misleading, and we tend to forget that at some point, we all were Mrs. Dalloway - lacking purpose. Of course, it's probably too soon to assume high school students are lacking purpose, since most of us probably haven't lived beyond the perspective of our white picket fences. But there are those of us who are well on the path towards a Mrs. Dalloway lifestyle. Her self consciousness about her social status as a high society woman threatens her grasp on purpose, for she drifts away from everything that should matter and focuses on the insignificant and unworthy aspects of her life. She forgets the mask she wears to satisfy such a route, and therefore suffers more than any being could possibly bear. And it's not even at times that the book is incredibly trying because the plot seems to lack depth, it's the fact that we refuse to understand what Woolf is really trying to tell us (or at least what I think she's telling me) - we are all Mrs. Dalloways (at least, at some point). And we yearn for depth as much as we yearn for a deeper book than what this novel seems to be.

Alright, now I can talk about my book haha.

The Hours is a play on the plot of Mrs. Dalloway. In fact, it's quite parallel in purpose and structure. It encircles the lives of three women: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, and a housewife named Laura Brown - each from a different time period, facing a common struggle. After understanding what Mrs. Dalloway was all about, it's not hard to guesstimate where this novel is going - it's not exactly a huge plot surprise. But it didn't win a Pulitzer Prize for nothing.
So far in the novel, Virginia Woolf has committed suicide, Mrs. Dalloway has decided to buy the flowers herself, and Laura Brown is baking a cake for her husband's birthday party.

You can see where this is going right?

I'm only on the 30th page, and I can already feel the monotony decaying what's left of my interesting life. But that's the point - to dive into their perspectives, or you'll never appreciate this novel. You suffer from this boredom as much as they do, and this suffering is pivotal, if not key, to encompassing the entire experience of this story. So if you are suffering, that's good stuff right there. I guess I'll update you on the cliffhanging events next week.

It's rather sad, isn't it? I think I'd go mad if I were to realize my life could be encapsulated in a single book.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/22/reviews/981122.22woodlt.html
 

Religion 

I actually never thought I'd be ballsy enough to talk about this, only because it offends too many people.

I grew up surrounded by God -not particularly at home, but definitely at school. I had a very rigorous schedule of figure skating when I was younger, so education was not exactly high on my priority list. And so my mother sent me to Catholic private schools, believing that they did not really focus too much on academics and that I could get away with missing about 4 months worth of school without them actually noticing.

I think people can tell at this point that Catholic school did not exactly resonate its worship-ly influence onto me. 

I remember having a horrible outlook on what it meant to be Catholic for quite some time. In case some of you don't know, you must be baptized to be Catholic (which happens when you're first conceived. Or you can go through this lengthy process when you're older to become Catholic). And obviously, I was not Catholic. That had several layers of implications for me. The first was being ostracized. I don't know if this applies for all children at that age who are Catholic, but I don't think there was a single Catholic student who did not think lesser (not sure if that's grammatically correct) of me simply because a priest did not pour holy water on my forehead. Most, perhaps all, assumed I was going to rot an eternity in Hell for that. 

It was so elitist that to this day it makes me want to punch a baby. 

 But back then I believed them, taking in their words entirely. And so I did my very best to be the BEST non-Catholic Catholic person I could be. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was a devout Christian. 

Eventually, I realized how ridiculous I was behaving (not because I wanted to be Catholic, but because I really never thought for myself on this subject and what I really wanted). But rather than taking one step back from faith, I took a 5 mile jog away from it all, turning myself into a devout Atheist. There was a point in time where I couldn't be within a 3 mile-radius of a Christian before I went ham on religion. 

But neither perspective was well thought out nor reasonable. 

The point is, I understand what it feels to come from both sides of the spectrum, and all I want to do now is meet both at the middle-ground. And when this happens, we all come to realize that religion is not ridiculous in its purest purpose, and it's not all that great either. But it is important to our societal structure. 

Because the truth is, we're all pretty disgusting human beings, whether you want to admit it or not. 

We've all had those incredible urges to do horrible deeds, as if we've swallowed the devil. And to me, that's simply the nature of our purest form - there's not much we can do about it. But religion, like the laws that govern our world, is what keeps us in place, in check. We cannot survive without binding most individuals to this habit of reminding them "be a good person, or some higher power will punish you". And that seems to be the lesson for almost all religions. We cannot recognize moral boundaries without such a power to watch over us at times, and for this, I thank religion. Faith can be a wonderful security system. And religion can not only provide security, but it can also change our perspectives. When we are dejected, we can concentrate on our faith to push through difficult obstacles in our lives, and as a result, we come out of the rabbit hole stronger and happier. We project our idealized images of what we deem as a perfect goal to reach onto these religious figures (i.e. Jesus, Buddha, etc.). That's another thing: projection. We do that a lot. We have difficulty looking inward at our own character, and so we revert to submitting it into a projection that is outwards and more obvious. And we hardly recognize that we are doing this, which makes the whole process rather pointless and ineffective (to me at least). As a result, most don't realize that they see these higher powers as a character to strive for (consciously). This doesn't make religion mindless (probably because most of what we do is mindless anyways). Rather, it becomes a way for us to improve ourselves without having too much of a painful intervention. 

And finally, my last reason for why religion matters is community. Religion does bring us together, whether you think it's because of common interest/common faith/common ideology/etc. It's just another conduit for us to reach out to each other, to touch each other (don't be dirty) in the most intimate (not physical) way. We're social creatures, and we thrive off of this sort of interaction. In fact, it's perhaps one of the most satisfying aspects of life: being able to find your niche and recognize that you belong somewhere. Some of us spend our entire lives trying to find that place, and for most religious individuals, they've already got theirs. If I envy anything about religious people, it's the fact that they have a support system which they can call home. I think that's when most people begin to feel real, when they know they are loved by someone/anyone.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand… once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

—	Skin horse, The Velveteen Rabbit

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/01/bg1064nbsp-why-religion-matters

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/03/20/why-is-religion-important-to-mental-health/