I love this book.
What can you do in nineteen minutes? Eat half of your favorite chicken rice? Watch 1/4 of a variety show? Read half of your readings? Browse all the clothes in one small shop in Far East? Take a train from Buona Vista to Bugis? Or act on an anger suppressed and tolerated for 18 years and kill 10 people in the school you hate with a vengence?
If you see someone being bullied in the streets, getting slapped or shoved, will you halt and try and put a stop to it? Or at least get someone to help? Or will you mind your own business and hurry away?
Morals. People always say the right thing at the right time, but when faced with the real situation, will they really do what they preach, or were the words just hot air to begin with? It's a pity that people have evolved into such selfish magnitudes, that while protesting and calling for justice, they are the ones who condoned and failed to acknowledge the root of the problem all along. And one day, the outburst might snowball to a magnitude too large to even be comprehended by anyone.
I kinda understand Josie. People always try to fit in, to belong somewhere, even at the expense of changing their whole self. At the end of it, you found yourself sacrificing so much of your own principles and thoughts that you may not know yourself at the end of it all. You end up not with friends, but mere alliances who are only hanging out with you because you belong, because you are just like them. Alliances which can be broken in an instant because they know that without "them", there is no "you". Who know that as long as the person being laughed at is not them, they will be no qualms laughing at the expense of them. Like Jenny in Gossip Girl, one day you have to ask yourself: is it worth it? Or are you trying to grasp at something that is intangible in the first place?
Love the intertwining of the Economics of Happiness in the story. The route to happiness is actually very simple if mathematically defined. The ratio of R/E: to achieve more happiness, you either improve your reality or lower your expectations. In that way you feel satisfied and thus, happy. To be happy about your studies, either you study harder for that A, or lower expectations to a B+. To be happy about food, either source for a better eatery or lower your expectations to what you can get. Satisfaction is the key, I guess.
I guess life can really be simpler, defined economically/mathematically.
Labels: books, rants
