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Misunderstanding

I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.

These words uttered by Augustus Waters in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars have been hugely misunderstood by me. I guess I've always regarded them as... as a positive thing - the notion of going up brings ideas of going up in the world and that sort of thing but now I see it differently.

What fun would a roller coaster be if it only went up? As well as being entirely dysfunctional, kind of bad and rubbishly impossible it would be... suspenseful. It would be a way of living filled with dissatisfaction and waiting and would just be so... hopeless.

I don't know why but it's just changed for me tonight, I've seen it in a completely different way; life can sometimes be like this stupidly suspenseful, waiting-around, false-hope filled thing and it's only when you realise that the suspense isn't going to lead to anything, the waiting around won't either and the hope is entirely, one-hundred percent worthless - it is only then that you realise that the roller coaster is going up and only up. It's a pointless path to take and, then we ask, why take it? But sometimes, just sometimes we like to believe that the drop is coming.

Sometimes we ignore the falsehoods and the truth of things because sometimes things are worth ignoring falsehoods for. My roller coaster may only be going up but someday, one day, it'll find it's way down and then, my friend, it will be incredible.

Comments

  1. Wow I've never thought about that quote that way - but I totes agree - what good is a rollercoaster that only goes up? There's no fun in that!

    Great blog post :) loved it.

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