From the WSJ, not about Wall Street
Posted by Paul on 22 Sep 2008 at 12:31 am | Tagged as: Books, Stuff
From the back page of the WSJ last week, buried under all the financial meltdown news, a thoughtful and evocative piece, if sad in the context, which has been reproduced in a few other places:
Interesting. Disregarding the extreme melancholia, he makes a good point about choosing the manner of one’s thoughts.
This piece made me think of one of my uncles, who committed suicide last year and was around the same age as DFW. A year before he died, we were sitting up late having a conversation over a Guinness at the Irish hotel where my grandparents had gathered us all. We were talking about life — getting older — and I was expressing frustration at the dullness of everyday life: endless conversation loops about paint colours, the drudgery of grocery shopping, the treadmill of office life. My uncle (a successful computer engineer, father of several of my wonderful cousins) was the serene one in this conversation, pointing out that life really *is* just a series of inconsequential things that often only add up to something meaningful if you step back to look at it from afar. To be honest, I didn’t buy this, and wanted to find some day-to-day greater purpose in what I was doing. I’ve felt somewhat guilty about this conversation ever since, and wondered if my refusal to accept the way he made sense of life somehow shook his beliefs. I really doubt it– but suicide leaves everyone else to feel guilty. And this DFW piece is full of good advice about how to approach the dismal day-to-day of life, advice which I can’t help thinking failed its author at some point.