Fiction is the Best Medium

"Fiction is the best medium for providing contexts for feelings by using language the reader may not be able to supply for herself."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 111

I agree. Fiction allows us to experience things we cannot even vocalize. We can identify with a character or situation and this can free us somehow. It is an amazing power that fiction has.

I can understand why Gold uses fiction to help his patients. This book is inspiring in so many ways. I always knew that there was a lot of truth in fiction. Gold shows us how this is indeed the case. It's a great book.

Emotions are Winning Out Over Reason

"There's nothing wrong with selling stuff, just as there is nothing wrong with buying stuff. But what has happened over time is that advertisers have become more sophisticated and more effective at bypassing the simple, straightforward type of message they used to deliver, which generally appealed to reason or common sense.

Advertisers have learned that it is more effective to bypass the rational part of the brain and instead target the emotions, crafting messages that appeal to pleasure, or give you a feeling of need you never knew you had, or take advantage of your weakness for convenience and instant gratification."

- David Walsh, PhD. No: Why Kids - of all Ages - Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It. Free Press, Toronto. 2007. pg 26-27

Avoid the Weary Cycle

"…left to its own devices life would never produce love, it would only lead you to attraction, from attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to weariness and boredom. Then comes a plateau. Then once again the weary cycle: attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. All of this mixed with the anxiety, the jealousies, the possessiveness, the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster."

- Anthony De Mello. The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of. Image Books,1991. pg 151

Can't Find the Words

"There have been moments in your life when you had an experience that you know you will have to carry with you to your grave because your are quite unable to find words with which to communicate that experience to anyone. As a matter of fact there simply are no words in any human language to communicate the exactly what you experienced...

You may try to communicate the experience in music or poetry or painting. But in your heart you know that no one will ever comprehend exactly what it was you saw and sensed. This is something you are quite powerless to express, much less teach, to another human being."

- Anthony De Mello. The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of." pg 94.

Bushels of Tumbling Emotions

I am reading this book right now and came across this quotable passage last night. I thought it was the perfect description of how the students at my school have been acting now that there are only six weeks left of school. Let me know if you agree. 

"We middle-schooler had been pretty rowdy during the final weeks, shouting, racing down halls and across campus, pulling pranks. It was as if we had bushels of tumbling emotions and energy to get rid of, and we dumped them out whenever and however we could."

- Domenica Santolina Doone, the main character in Sharon Creech's Bloomability.

Story Gives Us What Real Life Lacks

"In short, a story well told gives you the very thing you cannot get from life: meaningful emotional experience. In life, experiences become meaningful with reflection in time. In art, they are meaningful now, at the instant they happen."

- McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 111

Don’t Let Go

“So you’re thinking about it.
you think that you got the answer now
and you’ve been praying about it
you’ve asked Him to remove the fear right now
so you’ve analyzed it, ya think ya have control
then you realize it’s time that you let go

It’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know it’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know that this will pass

So you can cry about it
The tears can help ya heal inside
I know ya lost ya mind now
and you just tell yourself to hide
so you’ve analyzed it, ya think ya have control
then you realize it’s time that you let go

It’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know it’s not your time, yeah
Feel it all but know that this will pass.”
- Goldfinger “Answers” from the self-titled album

Joy & Pain

“There are only two emotions – pleasure and pain. Each has its variations: joy, love, happiness, rapture, fun, ecstasy, thrill, bliss, and many others on one hand, and anguish, dread, anxiety, terror, grief, humiliation, malaise, misery, stress, remorse, and many others on the other hand. But at heart life gives us only one or the other.”
- McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 243

I wonder if life truly is this simple. Can it be a dichotomy between two things with just variations on one or the other? I mean, if there are only two emotions, maybe there are only two of everything. I mean, there are only two sexes, right? And there are only two activities; work and play. And there are only two things to do with the written word; read or write. Hmm, I think he might just have something here.