Bokonon defines maturity

[hfojvt]

"'Maturity,' Bokonon tells us, 'is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.'"

Is, or is not, bitterness a sign of maturity? Sorta what happens to most people when they realize their novel will never be published, realize they will never make 109 million dollars just by sharing their wit and wisdom through speeches, realize that they will never run in, much less win, the Boston marathon, realize that you are now 35 years old and stuck in an unfulfilling job with a tepid love-life, "friends" who talk behind your back, and kids who talk back to your face or some combination thereof and realize that every day just brings you closer to your inevitable death. It's what happens when the heavy hand of reality has come down on your dreams like a giant invisible hand smashing a mosquito on the arm of a god.

Or is that only true of the losers, of the whiners, of those determined to see a glass half empty even though they have enough water to swim in? Those who do not realize that "disappointments are inevitable, discouragement is a choice."

I think I lean to the first, that not only is life hard, but that all too often it is made much harder than it has to be. It's hard not to get discouraged or bitter. I'll probably get a little discouraged by the responses, or the lack thereof to this thread, although I laughed bitterly while writing it.

[JeffR]

1. First rec

Very thoughtful, very disquieting.

[hfojvt]

2. my cousin IS running in the Boston marathon

many people find more fulfillment in life than I did, or at least it seems so. Many people, though, are doing okay and then get knocked down, perhaps by a hurricane, perhaps by a serious disease, perhaps by a fire or auto accident. This is even truer on the edge of poverty.

"For practically every family, then, the ingredients of poverty are part financial and part psychological, part personal and part societal, part past and part present. Every problem magnifies the impact of the others, and all are so tightly interlocked that one reversal can produce a chain reaction with results far distant from the original cause. A run-down apartment can exacerbate a child's asthma, which leads to a call to an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an unreliable used car, which jeapordizes a mother's punctuality at work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing. You will meet such a person in Chapter One. If she or any other impoverished working parent added up all of her individual problems, the whole would be more than the sum of their parts." The Working Poor by David K. Shipler

[JeffR]

3. That Shipler quote nails it.

There's a delicate balancing act that all but the rich need to maintain, and the nearer to the poverty line, the tougher that balancing act becomes and the more dire the consequences for anyone who gets knocked down.

[hfojvt]

4. Just gotta kick this since another call is made for people to 'grow up'

A friend of mine posited that since 'grow up' seemed to be one of our ultimate insults it showed that our culture is endemic with disrespect/contempt for children.

Perhaps it's just our disrespect for logic. Since we can't prove somebody wrong, we attack them as immature.