In anticipation for Netflix’s 2016 adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events (no release date as yet), we’ll be posting a wonderfully pessimistic Snicket quote every now and again–a consistent dose of reality (and compassion) for the suffering. The following comes from The Wide Window:
There is a way of looking at life called “keeping things in perspective.” This simply means “making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people.” For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, “Well, at least I’m not being eaten by a bear.”
You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple.
2 comments
Jason Thompson says:
Jul 8, 2016
Yes, ‘look on the bright side’, ‘keep it in perspective’ is all LAW. When I think of passages for example in the sermon on the mount that identify our tendency to worry about petty things or to focus on our neighbor’s speck instead of examining our beam (though I know this quote isn’t saying exactly that), I am increasingly realizing that Jesus is not giving us a spiritually empowered self-help tool, but rather a Divine diagnostic that proves over and over again without fail that we are incurably self focused and unable to keep things in perspective. The gospel can only come to us… we cannot activate having a gospel centered view of life that keeps all things in their proper perspective. On the contrary, we all constantly get stuck in our own myopic world – we can’t focus on our neighbor’s needs, or consider that ‘well, things could be worse’… as much as we would like to and know we should. We shouldn’t be self centered, but we can’t not be as Adam’s kids. Thank God that not only must the gospel keep finding us… in Christ, the gospel daily and faithfully DOES find us.
Good post!
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Calling a Thing What it is: Ruminations with Lemony Snicket, Pt 2 | Mockingbird says:
Sep 20, 2016
[…] yet another quote from the celebrated children’s author, Lemony Snicket, posted for your amusement (and […]