1. "Crime and Horror" naturally appeals to me.
2. I had taken a class called "Murder" before. This was a natural next step.
3. The Professor's name is "Kaiser" which is supremely badass.
4. The TF was hot.
5. The readings were fun! We had, among others, "Dracula", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Confessions of a Thug", "Wuthering Heights" and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I will come back to this later.
Anyway, I did take the class and it was great fun. The requirements were easy - 5 2 page "Thought Papers" on 5 readings of our choice and 2 7 page papers on given topics. That was it. Also, sections/tutorials were a lot of fun. For the "Dracula" section, the TF brought cranberry juice and cups so we could imagine we were drinking blood. Awesome.
Naturally, it was too good to last. The joke was on me. At the time I took it, this class did not count for a Literature requirement. So, for me, it was an elective. Had I known that it would have counted for a Literature requirement, I never would have taken the fricking bane of my life, "Poems, Poets and Poetry." Eff that crap.
Of course, there's also good poetry...
Anyway, back to the point about reading. Among the books we had to read, one rather unknown one, to me at least, was "Lady Audley's Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. But, I think, it had the best quote, or at least the most thought-provoking quote among all the books. It goes like this:-
"Let any man make a calculation of his existence, subtracting the hours in which he has been thoroughly happy — really and entirely at his ease, without one arriere pensee to mar his enjoyment — without the most infinitesimal cloud to overshadow the brightness of his horizon. Let him do this, and surely he will laugh in utter bitterness of soul when he sets down the sum of his felicity, and discovers the pitiful smallness of the amount. He will have enjoyed himself for a week or ten days in thirty years, perhaps. In thirty years of dull December, and blustering March, and showery April, and dark November weather, there may have been seven or eight glorious August days through which the sun has blazed in cloudless radiance, and the summer breezes have breathed perpetual balm. How fondly we recollect these solitary days of pleasure, and hope for their recurrence, and try to plan the circumstances that made them bright; and arrange, and predestinate, and diplomatise with fate for a renewal of the remembered joy. As if any joy could ever be built up out of such and such constituent parts! As if happiness were not essentially accidental — a bright and wandering bird, utterly irregular in its migrations; with us one summer's day, and forever gone from us on the next!"
Okay, so it's a really long quote. But I think it will be worth your while to read it and to understand it. It's profound. For 2 main reasons, I think.
Firstly, whether we like it or not, most of the time, we are all just going through the motions. Our lives do not have spectacular or legendary events on a day-to-day basis. And, as we grow older, we have more and more worries, simply because we tend to have more responsibilities.
So, how often will we have an hour in which we are thoroughly content with life. An hour where there isn't a single worry we can think of. No worries about the past, none at the present, none for the future. No niggling worry about that report you're supposed to finish. No regret about some stupid thing you did when you were drunk. No need to go run any errand at the present. Just you and pure contentment.
And so, when we sum it all up, as the author writes, the sum of our felicity will indeed be rather small. And it's important to make the distinction between "happy" and "content". Here's the key - "without the most infinitesimal cloud to overshadow the brightness of his horizon." You can be happy without being content. To me, "content" just means that you are completely at ease with who you are at a given moment. "Happy" means something happened that pleased you or made your day. You're not necessarily "content."
Happiness:-
Contentment:-
Anyway, the second point is this bit:-
"How fondly we recollect these solitary days of pleasure, and hope for their recurrence, and try to plan the circumstances that made them bright; and arrange, and predestinate, and diplomatise with fate for a renewal of the remembered joy. As if any joy could ever be built up out of such and such constituent parts!"
I will happily raise my arm and admit that I have tried to rekindle those solitary days of pleasure. I tried to make the circumstances such that it was as close as possible to that moment of contentment. And of course, these attempts generally failed. Which therefore implies, you can't plan for contentment. You kind of have to just go with it and maybe, if you're lucky, you can stumble into it every now and then. The most you can do is to give yourself a decent shot and hope you strike. But there's no way you should be counting on it. Sometimes, you just gotta go with it.
My (future) attempt to give myself a decent shot:-
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