This past week, we talked about the excerpts from Chuang Tzu, Flame, and Broken. This blog post will be about my opinion on these stories.
My favorite section from the excerpts is definitely section J. I love the first sentence-“Is there such a thing as perfect happiness in the world or isn’t there.” This section is about what people find happiness in and how people feel bad about when the perfect happiness can’t be reached. In my own opinion, I think many people believe that happiness is associated with tangible items. Having money, having fancy items, being the best at one’s job and so forth. But for me, happiness comes from within. There are more internal reasons to be happy rather than external objects. One of my favorite quotes in this section states “I look at what ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing around as though they couldn’t stop – they all say they’re happy with it. I’m not happy with it and I’m not unhappy with it.” Happiness comes from within, so if people are trying to obtain some object that they think will make them happy, they don’t understand true happiness. Personally, I rather be poor and happy than sad and rich. Friendships, love, connections and relationships should make people happy, not having the biggest house or fanciest phone or whatever. That’s just my opinion on how happiness is different for others, but people shouldn’t strive to obtain this happiness. It should just happen naturally without effort.
We also talked about arranged marriages because that was the theme for Flame. The main question was whether we would disobey our parents to marry our true love or accept this arranged spouse because you were told to. Personally, if one finds true love, go for it. I know this doesn’t happen in our culture, so I can’t imagine what it would be like if I was forced to marry someone against my will. So I tried to put myself in Nimei’s shoes. I would go for the love of my life even though my mother wouldn’t approve of it. Hopefully, my mother would come back around and see that I’m truly happy and that she could still be associated with my life. However, that’s not a given and one’s relationship with their parents could be ruined forever. But then after discussing with my classmates, I may have listened to my mother because my arranged spouse was able to feed me while the other villagers weren’t able to have a steady supply of food coming in. Would it seem selfish that I refused free food for the love of my life knowing that other villagers would appreciate the food income. All I know is that if you find someone you love, don’t let anybody hold you back or prevent you from being with that person.
The last story was about how men and women aren’t treated the same. This story is about how people stereotype men and women when it comes to having many relationships or sleeping with many people. I felt bad that this story accurately describes our own society for a fiction novel. Tingting is sleeping with Benchou, who is already married and having an affair. First of all, it shouldn’t be the coworkers business who is sleeping with who. If there is an affair going on, there should be at least four people who know about the current situation-the two people having the affair and their respective spouses (if married). Second of all, Tingting gets verbally attacked when being interrogated, while Benchou easily acts like nothing has happened. Eventually, our main character gets himself in a dilemma. He is approached by some unidentified human at the movie theater, who ends up doing some unusual sexual things during the movie. Manjin then tries to find this person after she leaves and approaches the wrong woman, which results in Manjin being interrogated for his actions. I’m surprised he is told that he has a minimum of three years for attempted sexual assault. Most news stories in our society involve the men getting away with stuff like this. The worst part of this story is the ending, where Tingting is the assumed woman in the movie scene dilemma. Just because she was considered “broken” in the beginning in the novel and how she had her confessions about Benchou earlier in the story, that doesn’t mean she is the unidentified woman. There was no clear evidence she was even involved in this problem. She eventually commits suicide, which absolutely makes this story depressing at the end. Men and women should be treated the same with the same rights, but because our society praises men when sleeping with other women and demoralizes women by calling them whore or slut when sleeping with many people, that can never happen in this society. That’s my opinion on this book and unfortunate scenario will live in throughout our society.