Today is the first Sunday in Lent.

[hermionesviolin]

From long and thoughtful entry on BtVS:

It's so much more challenging for the writers to come up with ways to make a relationship *work* rather than ways to make it fall apart. And it's more ... um ... inspiring? Constructive? Edifying? Yeah, edifying ... to model a functional relationship, at least occasionally, instead of going the easy route and doing Yet Another Example of Dysfunction. *yawn*

"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
--Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

To which I say "bullshit". What could be more boring than a monotonous line of miserable, whiney, self-involved, dysfunctional asshats desperately clinging to their miserable, whiney, self-involved, dysfunctional asshat-ness. I'd so much rather read about/watch people striving to improve their lot in life. Yeah, sometimes failing but continuing to work hard at it.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to your sight O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. Sarah-the-RC left a tulip and a card outside each person’s door. Mine is in that vaselike thing Joanna made for me some Christmases ago, under my Magritte poster.

And the weather has been beautiful today and yesterday.

I would look up, and laugh, and love, and lift.

Comments

[zzrg.livejournal.com]

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. -Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Unhappiness does not equate with dysfunctional. Often it is the outside world which causes unhappiness and it is only against such external forces that ones mettle can be test, nay seen at all.

Unhappy is a dissatisfaction, a yearning for something better even if it cannot be named. A couple that is truly happy together has grown complacent or disinterested, the first step towards failure, or at least couples counseling. The couple that recognizes that bittersweet taste of unhappiness and takes each other's hand and ventures forth to take on the challenge, these are the functional ones, the ones I envy, the ones I want to be like.

Tolstoy quote, evolution, economics

[(Anonymous)]

Your comment reminded me of the all-too-accurate epigram, "Evolution didn't design humans to be happy; it designed them to be successful." Person one has sex and is happy and satisfied. Person two has sex and after a while is horny and dissatisfied and wants to do it again. Who leaves more offspring?

We are perennially dissatisfied. If we lose what we want, we don't accept it. We try to "do better." If we get what we want, we soon want more and try to get it. If you take an economics course and someone says that people try to "maximize their satisfactions," you know they haven't thought deeply about it.

Perhaps that's why we are so much more interested in unhappiness, in dissatisfaction. Humans love stories, and it is a cliche that stories need conflict. In that sense, maybe all happy families are the same; no one would want to hear a story about them. But each unhappy family provides new material.

RAS

Tolstoy and the Truth

[douglas-conrad.livejournal.com]

At least in Tolstoy's Russia you didn't have to look at them all day long. Now you see it 24/7 on the amusement park of television, where every sideshow freak clamors to stand in front of the camera and flash the audience with their pathetic, pointless life.