"It is not the ctitic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

~Theodore Roosevelt

Monday, February 15, 2010

Quotes

Junior year of high school my friends and I kept a quote book. It had interesting saying like,


"The only reason organic things are organic is because they aren't sprayed with the stuff that cleans of the animal pee... but heck, animals eat healthy anyway."

"...yes, we're compatible, our children won't die off."

"Then you get the weird ones in there-who wants to eat a window?"

"I think Prom is a sign from the devil that we are going to die."

AND

"My mind is like a black room full of cobwebs and spiders-but the spiders are very smart."


......but one turned out to be pretty profound, "If my life were a book..."

I don't remember what was going on or why it came out but I do remember that I quoted it a lot that year. We even went through each person and predicted what would happen if their lives played out with them as characters in books. I don't think any of us were particularly excited aobut how our story book lives would go. To be honest, they weren't all that 'story book' like. But then, if our lives turned out that way, we would have been happy. How many characters have the life they expected? How many times do the couples hate each other at first and fall in love by the end?

I think irony has a lot to do with it. Irony can be such a frustrating thing, but it also makes life more interesting. Movies such as, "10 Things I Hate About You," "Two Weeks Notice," "27 Dresses," "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," and "The Proposal" all have characters who you would never expect to be together. But then, we've been reading and watching these stories for so long we CAN guess who will end up together.

Irony is, 'an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.' Yes, we did plan things out, but I don't think that can count as 'expected.' I had no say in the way my friends predicted my life would go. But I don't think they really expected it to happen anyway.

While I can find many parallels between my life and ironic twists from movies I can't see my life going the way we planned junior year. I can't see my friends' lives following their paths either. But I would laugh pretty hard if our lives turned out that way.
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3 comments:

  1. BiegeFebruary 17, 2010 at 7:00 PM

    Do you remember what you said would happen to me if my life were a book?

    ReplyDelete
  2. BerganStarrFebruary 17, 2010 at 11:17 PM

    Uh...no.. what did I say? I could guess but I'm not sure.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Windthicket FablesMarch 26, 2010 at 10:05 AM

    LOL- We have a quote book too...but it's still going. I think it's reached 15 pages now. LOL. And in high school, my friends and I used to write stories with all of us as the characters- and we always made our friend Jenny the murderer. They always ended the same way- with us all dead and her laughing maniacally. LOL. What fun.

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