“Sonnet 34: Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day” by William Shakespeare

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.
Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.

While this poem is one of the “fair youth” sonnets, and is about some sin committed against the speaker by a person that he loves, for me, it has a more universal meaning.

I interpret this poem as a reflection on expectations. As humans, we cannot help but project about our future, and have expectations based upon those projections, whether we expect good or bad things to happen. It is rare, though, that our expectations are met. We are either painfully disappointed, or pleasantly surprised. In this poem, the speaker has strong expectations, symbolized by the promise of “a beauteous day,” but then the clouds of reality and disillusion set in, blotting out his fantasy. It is a feeling I suspect we can all relate to. I know I certainly can. Expectations usually lead to disappointment. I try to avoid them as best I can.

Thanks for sharing in my musings, and have a blessed day.

The X-Files – Issue 4 (Ishmael Pt 1): People on Pedestals

I’ve had this in my pile to read for a while, but have been busy so just got to it. It’s the first installment on a story that explores Dana Scully’s past and her relationship with her father. It’s pretty good, and the artwork is nice, and I love stories that have a connection to Melville’s great novel. But what I wanted to write about is a passage that struck a nerve for me, about putting people on pedestals.

We place people on pedestals and, sometimes, rightly so—but when they reveal themselves to be human we tend to just build a bigger pedestal… instead of allowing for everything they might be at once…

(p. 12)

Dana is expressing her feelings on what happened when she discovered a secret about her father’s past, but this taps into something more universal that I see in society today. We place people on pedestals all the time: sports stars, politicians, writers, musicians, etc. And when these people fail to live up to the expectations we set for them while on the pedestal, there is a tendency to react with anger at what is seen as a personal betrayal. Another thing I see happening is that if anyone challenges or threatens those that are placed on pedestals, people also react with anger, as if it is an attack on them.

I have learned not to place expectations on people. When I do, I am often disappointed. The important lesson here is that no one is perfect and everyone has flaws; but just because someone has flaws, that does not make that person bad or evil, it just makes them human. I think this is something that we should all keep in mind this election season, or before we react to someone’s Facebook post.

Thanks for stopping by, and keep reading and thinking.

Why It’s Important to Read “Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee

Before I started reading this book, I had heard the harsh criticism directed toward it. I decided not to let it stop me from reading the book and inquired of my Facebook friends if anyone had a copy I could borrow. My friend Amy came forth and said she had one which she had preordered and was still in the box. She said based upon what she heard, she could not bring herself to even open it. I told her I would let her know my thoughts and whether she should read it or not. After finishing, I say yes, read it. Here’s why.

First off, everyone needs to understand that this is not To Kill a Mockingbird, nor is it as good. Let’s be realistic—it would be quite a feat for any author to write two books of that caliber. But there is still an important message here that I feel is relevant to our current society.

OK, yes, Atticus Finch expresses racist ideas in this book. Now ask yourself: Why does that make you so angry and uncomfortable? While racism is repugnant and offensive, Atticus is a fictional character. So this visceral reaction that people have is something more than just a reaction to racism, and this gets to the heart of why reading this book is important. The negative response to this book, in my opinion, is because a person that we have come to idolize, albeit a fictional person, has failed to live up to our idealized expectations. This need that our culture has to expect our heroes and idols to be perfect is a real problem in our society. We place political leaders, sports stars, writers, artists, and so forth, all on pedestals and we want them to be perfect. One flaw, one aspect about them that does not agree with our image of how they should be, and we attack them viciously. It is a serious problem. With the election coming up, I hear people saying “I cannot support ________ because of his/her stance on _________.” It’s not a question of how good the candidate is, or whether that person would be the better leader; it is a question of whether that person meets ALL our expectations. If not, then they are not worthy in our eyes. Now it seems we have projected our expectations of perfection onto fictional characters as well. For me, there is something really wrong with this picture.

The irony here is that having our idols fall from grace is actually what this book is about. In the story, Jean Louise (Scout) sees her father fall from the proverbial pedestal. For many of us, our parents are our first idols, those we look up to for guidance and wisdom. It is often devastating when we are forced to confront the fact that our parents, like all our idols, have their flaws.

It happened so quickly that her stomach was still heaving. She breathed deeply to quieten it, but it would not stay still. She felt herself turning green with nausea, and she put her head down; try as she might she could not think, she only knew, and what she knew was this:

The one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge. “He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman,” had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly.

(p. 113)

Dealing with the disillusion that accompanies the realization that your idols (particularly parental ones) are not what you envision can have profound consequences, as evidenced by the plethora of patients seeking counseling for family issues. This is why it’s important to read this book, and face the fact that no one that we idolize can possibly meet our expectations. The expectations we set for other people by nature are not attainable.

I will close with another quote from this book which I thought was great.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

(pp. 270 – 271)

“Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens – My 500th Blog Post

My friend Jerry gave me a copy of this book since I had never read it before. I wanted to read more Dickens (a writer whose works were noticeably missing from the list of books I’d read) and this was a great one.

To briefly sum up this book, it is the story of Pip, an orphaned boy who is brought up by his harsh aunt and her kind but timid husband Joe. Pip is “hired” by the rich and bitter Miss Havisham to spend time with her foster daughter, Estella, with whom Pip falls hopelessly in love. Pip then mysteriously comes into wealth from an unknown source and moves from the country to London to become a gentleman. As the story plays out, it becomes an exploration of social contrasts: expectation and reality; country life and city life; rich and poor; public and private; free and incarcerated; and so forth.

Throughout the book, people with great expectations often suffer the pain of having those expectations crushed by reality. I found this as a representation of Romantic idealism failing in the harsh light of social realism. A great example of this early in the book is Miss Havisham, who was duped by a con-man and left on her wedding day. Her shattered dreams and expectations caused her to crumble and decay internally. This internal decay is also reflected in her surroundings, as she allows her grand home to decay around her.

“On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay,” stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, “was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.”

She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the once white cloth all yellow and withered: everything around, in a state to crumble under a touch.

(p. 98)

One of the sad realities of life that I have personally come to accept is the loss of friendship, not as a result of anything drastic, but just because people end up taking different paths in life which often lead us in divergent directions. Dickens poignantly expresses this in a scene where Joe accepts that he will no longer share the close relationship with Pip because Pip’s life has taken a different course.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’marshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you.”

(pp. 248 – 249)

One of the things I found fascinating about this book is how relevant it still is to today’s society. We are still obsessed with wealth and often judge individuals by their material success. We also judge people by appearance, especially those we feel fall into the category of criminal types (I’m thinking about racial profiling here). There is no doubt that incarceration in prison changes a person, but we as a society see that as a permanent stain on that individual’s character, regardless of any effort made by that individual to change. This is expressed in a scene where Pip is harboring the escaped convict, Provis. Regardless of Pip’s attempts to disguise him, he still looks like a convict in Pip’s eyes.

Next day the clothes I had ordered, all came home, and he put them on. Whatever he put on, became him less (it dismally seemed to me) than what he had worn before. To my thinking there was something in him that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner growing more familiar to me: but I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man.

(p. 372)

At first, it was difficult for me to feel pity for Pip, because he is often so arrogant and treated those who loved him poorly because he was embarrassed by their social standing. But then as I thought about it, there were certainly times, particularly in my youth, when I was embarrassed by certain friends and family and didn’t want to appear to be too close with them while with other acquaintances that I wanted to make a good impression with. But like Pip, as I matured and went through life experiences, I changed and became a better person (I think). By the time I reached the end of the book, I saw more of myself in Pip, a person humbled by life’s experiences, willing to take responsibility for mistakes made, and eager to make amends to the loved ones he had harmed.

As I mentioned in the title, this is my 500^th post on Stuff Jeff Reads. I have to say that this has far surpassed my expectations for this blog. At this point, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts and to share yours. It’s only because of the interesting, creative, and supportive people I’ve met through blogging that I have continued thus far. Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and I hope your day is filled with books and happiness!