I’m a hopeFUL romantic, not a physicist

Emotional amnesia makes me a hopeFUL romantic

I have emotional amnesia. Don’t worry, I remember everything pretty much as well as anyone else, but I don’t remember how I felt during those memories. At my highest mountains I feel invincible, forgetting they’re the step before the drop, while at the lowest valleys I feel depressed, not being able to remember the mountain tops. Because of this, I am forever a hopeFUL romantic. So of course, when we were going around in class reading Judge Soderberg’s monologue, I kept mindlessly counteracting his accusations with examples of good. I have to point out that I am not naive, though. I just have hope that one day, love will change the world. Petit united people of all colors, socio-economic status, and ages with his crime. As much as I respect his amazing abilities (I don’t think I’ll ever not be in wonder of what he did), I don’t really agree that his crime is a “good” one: his intentions were not to unite; his intentions were to simply conquer another feat for himself. This is just a thought though, please don’t come after me!

Irked

Knowing the backstories of everyone in the book, it really annoyed me that the judge is very forgiving of Petit while simultaneously speaking damnation upon Tillie and Jazzlyn (and anyone like them). I think the effect of doubling these two events is supposed to show the stark contrast between “bad” vs. “good” crimes, but I just ended up being irritated. Where is the line between art and crime drawn? I am aware, however, that if the judge doesn’t treat these matters as black and white (which they are not), the justice system might not get anywhere.

And so the world spins.

People get into accidents, people get divorced, people lose their homes, people die… and the world spins. This hurts quite a lot. For the longest time, I expected the world to stop spinning every time something bad happened to me. I expected people to drop their lives and come to my rescue. It didn’t take until I was literally left with nothing that I had the realization that the world spins, and it will never wait for me to keep up. Instead of giving up, I started working on using that to make every day an opportunity to make the world a better place, because as Xhesika mentioned in her post, we are all connected in some way, shape or form (what did I tell you about being a hopeFUL romantic?). I actually have at least one connection to almost everyone in our class, which still blows my mind. I guess everything happens for a reason, right?

The bridge that unsettled me the most would have to be the one between Ciaran and Tillie. Ciaran hates the prostitutes, hates the drug dealers and addicts, hates the Bronx; yet, Ciaran has sex with Tillie. This is a physical turning point for Ciaran, who is warming up to life in the Bronx and seeing the humanity in these prostitutes, drug dealers, addicts.

This brings me to the bridge that makes my heart sing, and possibly the most unpopular one: Ciaran and Lara. This is where the hopeFUL romantic in me shines. I see myself in Ciaran. I try my best to forgive the people who have wronged me (I’m still working on it); some of my closest friends are people who have hurt me the most. Martin Luther King Jr. stated “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us,” which is what Ciaran and I have come to believe. I could speak forever on forgiveness and love, because at the end of the day, I believe love is the strongest force in the universe. As you can probably tell, I am not a physicist.