Of Human Bondage, etc
Of Human Bondage, etc
I finished Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. No sooner had I finished it
I realized that I didn’t really complete this book the first time. Mostly I must have just dallied with the pages, as it was such a long novel. But now I am glad that I had concentrated on the book and didn’t omit any pages. I was surprised that how a realistic touch the writer gave to the story, though I had known beforehand it was a semi-autobiographic fiction.
I held great sympathy for Philip, the protagonist of the story. Often I found that at one time or another I had gone through the similar emotion as he did, though the causes were different from his. When he lost his fortune and had to give
up his medicine study to work in a shop, the boredom weighed on him as much as when I had to stand in the roadside restaurant. I had to try to prevent my mind from going idle when I stood there or sat in the staff room in order not to clasp
into distress.
Because I was so bored I had started to question the meaning of life as much as
Philip did when he suffered so much and profited so little in the experience of
living the world. It was such a difficult question. I don’t really know why I can never get over the side of mortality in human’s life. Haven said that, it gradually ceases to bother me much these days. What bothers me is why it is so difficult to get on with life.
More often than not, people only tend to get a handle on their life after they arrive at a certain age. Like the couple I met yesterday and the student, who is
a multinational company runner, I teach now. The couple were all in their forties and my student in his fifties. It seems a fact that success comes only after years-long experience. But why can’t one achieve that earlier than that? It is actually quite dreadful for me to imagine that I maybe will be ending up in a similar situation.
My friend’s mother has a strange philosophy of life. She thinks any job is good
as long as it comes with stability. I am actually quite annoyed to hear her repeat to me her ways of thinking. In her opinion I should always keep the job in the roadside restaurant. She said she wished to work there in her summer holiday
break. But I know she couldn’t handle it. In the far past maybe she could, but
not after enjoying her comfort in her life so many years.
On the other hand I don’t think I mind about hardship. What made me quit the job is not the menial hardship, but the opportunity cost that fleets by. There are
so many people who work on shifts there complain about the boredom of the work,
and some of them have been complaining for seven years. They don’t quit because the job doesn’t require any intellectual side of it. But I feel that the brain or mind is like a ladder. Once you get onto a certain stage, certain things will start to dread you.
In a way that’s probably why, more often than not, the intellectual are less happy than the illiterate. What the illiterate can put up with is oftentimes intolerable for the intellectual, because the knowledge gained by the latter opened up a lot of other sides of the world. People in the roadside restaurant probably
think I am queer, because during the breaks I would prefer reading than gossiping and chaffing other people. Philip said sometimes he felt the loneliest when he was in the crowd, I felt the same. I wished I were miles away when people didn
’t understand me but try to make me out.
This afternoon I was sitting in the garden alone, when I suddenly realized that
I was actually alone. The chickens quietly rambled around at the other side of the fence. I sat at the bench in the sunshine and the sun beams drew shades on the grass through the garden tree. By my side there was a square pot of small pink
flowers blooming in the sun. I suddenly gained a feeling of tranquility. It made me almost want to sob. It was such a warm feeling. I felt that I had been beaten up during the past few weeks, now finally I started to heal up.
But I don’t regret the experience, both physically and mentally. In Of Human Bondage Philip was once given a Parisian rug and was told to liken it to life. The
threads of the rug were like experiences you gain in the life as you go along.
Good or bad, they would all be woven to complete your rug of life. And that rug
is yours whether you like it or not. For me I can hardly imagine what mine will
look like in the end, but here I will borrow one sentence from Rabindranath Tagore to express my hopes and end this article: “Let Life be beautiful like summer
flowers and death like autumn leaves.”
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