What Makes Life Worth Living...
Author's Note: I wrote this piece as a response to what we discussed in Book Club. During our discussion we spent lots of time on logicality versus emotion. After we made a "Worth Living" list, it was clear to me that emotion had everything to do with all things on the list, all things we love; logicality suddenly didn't seem as important as we thought. This response reflects the differences between the main character and I, and most importantly, what I believe makes life worth living. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Christopher, an autistic teen, rocks our concept of what is significant or meaningless, sane or dysfunctional, and symbolic or real; he makes us question reality. With every straight-forward, blunt, simplistic statement Christopher delivers, we begin to wonder why we do what we do everyday. While Christopher's mindset is completely logical, it is quite clear that he lacks genuine empathy and emotion. This makes us ponder how anyone could possibly live without emotion. My conclusion? It is impossible; emotion brings us closer to the things that make life worth living.
Family is such a prominent aspect of life that has absolutely nothing to do with intellectuality, but everything to do with feelings and emotion. The love of a family truly does make life worth living. We constantly depend on family for teaching us to learn to live, and to learn to love. They rely on us equally as much as we rely on them. They are our support system, our mentors, our guidance -- our life.
Sadly we are faced with the reality of our world. We are faced with the fact that millions of individuals face every day of their lives without a family. They are left feeling lost in between the cracks without the support that derives from the love of a family. This is why it is so imperative to remember that it is not "family" that makes life worth living -- not just our blood-relatives. But rather the relationships we build so that we create a bond with someone so exceptional, so strong, we are proud to call them family. As novelist Richard Bach said, "Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.”
Some people, such as Christopher, may view life in a literal sense. Units like a family, may simply be considered a definition -- "any group of persons closely related by blood." But to me, family means so much more. If you simply use your heart and not your head, you will find that family does indeed make life worth living for.
I really enjoyed reading that. You made some really good points about why it is impossible to live without emotion. I also thought you had really good vocabulary -- as usual:). Nice job!
ReplyDelete“This makes us ponder how anyone could possibly live without emotion. My conclusion? It is impossible; emotion brings us closer to the things that make life worth living.” The thesis statement written by Madeline portrays her belief of the perceived disillusion of Christopher, a boy with autism. Emotion certainly has its place in abstract feelings and love, but stating that he lacks genuine empathy and emotion is unequivocally wrong. Christopher has emotions, but what he feels is emotion through logic.
ReplyDeleteChristopher understands emotions. He just sees emotions through a logical eye. For the sake of this argument, we will look at one of the most powerful emotions – love. Love has multiple definitions. Love can be used to describe unconditional feelings toward a spouse or a child (I love my wife), to describe the joy of participating in a sport or an activity (I love playing and watching football), to describe the enjoyment of food (I love Culver’s double butterburger cheese). However, his definition of the word differs from all these definitions.
Christopher uses logic as a lens to understand emotion. Can someone describe a relationship with a spouse as companionship, as comfort, and as support systems while honestly say they are living without love? Just because the relationship is solely logical and may not include emotion does not mean that the logical person could not care less if the relationship ends.
Although Christopher’s autism makes it appear as though he does not understand emotion, he just does not view emotion in the same light as you or I. Christopher did not want the dog to die. Does this mean he loved the dog? To you and me, no. However, using Christopher’s definition of love and Christopher’s mind, losing the dog left a void in his heart. He loved that dog.
I'm glad you wrote an argumentative response! I agree with some of the things you mentioned to a degree, like he has emotion through logic. Although I still stick to what I wrote:) I still believe that he lacks the similar genuine emotion most of us have;it's not his fault and I'm not blaming him for it. It's just something he doesn't really obtain and it's not the way his mind works.
ReplyDeleteWell, I would have to say that I am in agreement with the basic thesis statement presented in this piece. It is a definitely necessary part of a healthy human being to feel emotions that are appropriately connected to behaviors or events in our lives. The fact that Christopher doesn't feel these emotions, but is left to reason what emotion is appropriate, only illustrates this point more clearly as he suffers from a damaged mind.
ReplyDeleteA healthy individual feels the world around him, feels the events and interactions, and indeed, uses those feelings as data to help guide them to make well-informed decisions.
In response to Mr. Roehl's note, I would add that there is a fundamental problem within out society as a whole, and the root of it can be traced to linguistics, that is, our lack of adequate language to speak accurately about what we mean when we say "love". The ancient Greeks had several different words for love, each used in a distinctly different context. The Greeks had different words which would have been used in each of the examples Mr. Roehl cites. However, we don't. We are prisoners of a blunt language in this regard -- ironic since English has more than double the vocabulary of any other language in the world. The fact that we healthy people, who are not suffering from a debilitating disease of the mind struggle to express or feel love in an appropriate way, just goes to show how far from real love Christopher is. He may be able to determine what sort of response would be dictated by logic, but anyone who feels love knows that logic has little to do with the emotion at all.