Tag Archive for 'Alain de Botton'

On pessimism

april published on August 13, 2011 in zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Alain de Botton – On Pessimism from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Why a lecture on pessimism, when SuperForest is all about positivity? Well, as Alain de Botton explains in his talk, our social and environmental conditioning has taught us that feeling sad is a big no-no. To deny sadness or hard times is to deny life! As I’ve been feeling low myself these past few months, de Botton’s lecture reminded me that a dose of melancholy is perfectly normal, to be expected, and to deny oneself the blues would be as crazy as crying every time it rains.

Sometimes we feel blue and that’s perfectly okay. So let’s welcome the sad times, because without them, how are we to appreciate the rad times?

April

 

100 Ways to Make the World a Better Place #85: Love Life Today

april published on January 16, 2010 in zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

If you were told, by a reputable scientist, that the world would end tonight, how would this news change the way you lived? Also, what would you do in this final hour?

proustian_thoughts1

Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922

In 1920s Paris, there was a publication called L’Intransigeant. It featured a section which posed big questions, relating to various topics. In 1922, a rather elaborate question was formulated. The premise being that a scientist has announced the world will end and that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people. The question read: “If this prediction were confirmed, what do you think would be its effects on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm? Finally, as far as you’re concerned, what would you do in this last hour?”

French novelist Marcel Proust (pictured above) sent in the following reply:

I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies it – our life – hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible forever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

I fell upon this story while reading How Proust Can Change Your Life by one of my favourite authors, Alain de Botton. I think it’s a wonderful reminder to live for now, appreciate life, and chase your dreams. Proust longed for the Louvre, love and India, and died just four months after submitting this reply. I wonder what you long for.

April