Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Well Said: Making heroes of ourselves

Do you think,’ said Tom, with a grave smile, ‘that even if she had never seen him, it is very likely she would have fallen in love with Me?’

‘Why not, dear Tom?’

Tom shook his head, and smiled again.

‘You think of me, Ruth,’ said Tom, ‘and it is very natural that you should, as if I were a character in a book; and you make it a sort of poetical justice that I should, by some impossible means or other, come, at last, to marry the person I love. But there is a much higher justice than poetical justice, my dear, and it does not order events upon the same principle. Accordingly, people who read about heroes in books, and choose to make heroes of themselves out of books, consider it a very fine thing to be discontented and gloomy, and misanthropical, and perhaps a little blasphemous, because they cannot have everything ordered for their individual accommodation. Would you like me to become one of that sort of people?’
Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit
This really struck me since it applies just as much in our own time, if not more. How many of us allow ourselves to be discontented because it isn't "ordered for our individual accommodation?" This is heavily influenced by the "way things should be" in books, movies, social media, and more; all without the balance of any sort of grounding in "higher justice."

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