Growing pains

Michel Lohan & Billy Ray Cyrus, daughter-suffering-from fathers in distraught.

It is nowadays clear we want to KNOW. We need to search for the meaning of things, provided everything has it, and  adjust ourselves to a mechanistic way of live: whatever happens, either good or bad, must have a causal-effect model that explains it. Our moral schemes and securities must prevail, around which the whole world gravitates.

However, it is just too painful to recognize it is not like that at all.

"The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. (...) Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance (of a work of art)" (Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, 1964).

The claim of Sontag in the 60s against interpretation holds his entirely value today in a broader sense, and can be extrapolated: "The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible" (O.Wilde). Let's try not to understand, but live. And so the mystery of naughty children who are lured by evil is just that _A mystery, a Mystery. There is not a plausible explanation for it, nor anyone can be taken responsible for it.

I would like to record here 3 fatherly advices that are to me master pieces of respect to the mystery of life. At the same time, accounts for a great educational value. Its virtue consists of accepting life as it is and ask for abidance to future generations.

1) Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird, tries to explain to his little daughter why a man just attempt to hurt her and to kill her brother: you must understand, little girl, in this life not everything is beautiful: you must be ready for ugly things.

2) Billy Joel is putting to sleep his little son, and he asks what is death like. Joel is going through a divorce at the precise time and he comes out with this tender and beautiful answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDFBa5tudPk

3) Let me back to A Christmas' Carol and consider the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge. Would do you not do mockery out of this conversion story? If not, would does it not be possible, from someone else? Would does that mockery not certainly jeopardize the whole ghost tale's message, if so? Dickens, nevertheless, is conscious of it and addresses the question and solve it: "Some people laughed to see the alteration on him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset (...)".