Deep Thoughts: I Gave 'Em Up

I've decided, in my effort to get out more in 2011, to join a book club here at my apartment community.  I love to read, so it really should be a no-brainer, except for the fact that socializing in any form is anathema to my current existence.  It's like I've forgotten how to hang out with people.  I did it in high school; there was a small group of us that went to parties, bowling, meals out, etc.  It wasn't hard.  It was--dare I say it?--fun.  Where, and when, did I go wrong?  No man is an island, and all that, but I'm doing a pretty bang-up job.

But, I digress, which I do a lot, as it became clear last week at work.  We had a "business meeting" wherein we fluttered from one unrelated topic to another whenever something caught our attention.  Let me illustrate further.  We pick up bagels every other Friday, and it was time to determine who would make the run.  I broached the subject with my dad (aka my boss) by saying, "It's Friday...I ain't got no job and I ain't got shit to do."  Before I could go into the original topic of bagels, I turned to my sister (aka my co-worker) and discussed memories of watching the movie Friday in my friend's basement with a group of people when I was in high school, and my sister mentioned one of the group's name, Junior, to which I responded, "Jun-ya."  And then I was on an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade roll.  We eventually got back to bagels, but I took a really long way around.

And I just did it again, didn't I?  Aren't I precious?  Anyway, the book (Remember the book?  This is a blog post about a book.  Or is it?) is a compilation of short stories by Alice Munro, Runaway.  I just finished the first story, which shares the same name as the book, and I was vaguely disturbed by it, but what really got me irritated was when the heroine, Carla, was remembering how she met her husband Clark and ran away with him (some things are becoming clearer as I write this) and responded to the one letter from her disapproving parents by saying something to the effect of (I don't have the book nearby so I'm sure to mangle this, so consider it paraphrased), "I'm trying to live an authentic life, but I don't expect you to understand."  And I think the reason I got irritated is because I didn't understand.  I just jumped on the idea that the use of the phrase, "authentic life" by an at the time eighteen year-old girl was just an empty phrase that sounded profound.

Because what makes life authentic?  I started to think about how my quiet, single life is authentic, and I haven't run away with a man I just met (give me time).  I thought about how everyone has to make the big and small choices that chart the course of their lives, even if those lives are vastly different from one another.  And none of those lives are less than authentic.  But...it wasn't long before I realized that maybe what Carla meant by an authentic life was living it without pretense.  "To thine own self be true," said Polonius to his son Laertes in Hamlet, and despite the fact that I didn't care for Polonius and wasn't altogether saddened when Hamlet killed him believing him his murderous uncle, that one line of dialogue is probably the most important line in all of Shakespeare's works.

As a teenager, I was full of empty "deep" thoughts, because I though it made me important.  I vividly remember riding in a friend's car through her neighborhood, having just been introduced to the words and concepts of non-conformity and idealism.  I remember thinking about how I met the definitions of those words, and if I didn't, how I could.  Non-conformity and idealism seemed very laudable goals, and why wouldn't I want to be part of a group/movement of such praise?  I was trying to mold myself into something I wasn't because I thought it was meaningful.  And I know it's a teenage thing to do, and I am so cheered that I was normal during an age when I felt everything but.  The point is, I was trying to make my life one big profound moment after another, to make things more meaningful than they were.  There's just not a lot of authenticity in that.

But, I still find myself doing that from time to time ("George Gray" from Masters' Spoon River Anthology remains one of my favorite poems to this day), but I've also come to accept that I'm pretty awesome as I am.

And how many references to popular (or not so popular) entertainment can I have in one post?