86
" and alice, i do feel like a failure, and in a way my life really is nothing, and very few people care what happens in it. it's so hard to see the point sometimes, when the things in life i think are meaningful turn out to mean nothing, and the people who are supposed to love me don't ... maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently ... and now i just feel like the kind of person whose life partner would fall out of live with them after several years, and i can't find a way not to be that kind of person anymore. "
― Sally Rooney , Beautiful World, Where Are You
98
" But looking at the inter
net, I don't see many ideas worth dying for. The only idea on
there seems to be that we should watch the immense human
misery unfolding before us and just wait for the most immis-
erated, most oppressed people to turn around and tell us how to
stop it. It seems that there exists a curiously unexplained belief
that the conditions of exploitation will by themselves generate
a solution to exploitation - and that to suggest otherwise is
condescending and superior, like mansplaining. But what if the
conditions don't generate the solution? What if we're waiting
for nothing, and all these people are suffering without the tools
to end their own suffering? And we who have the tools refuse
to do anything about it, because people who take action are
criticised. Oh, that's all very well, but then, what action do I
ever take? In my defence I'm very tired and I don't have any
good ideas. Really my problem is that I'm annoyed at everyone
else for not having all the answers, when I also have none. And
who am I to ask for humility and openness from other people?
What have I ever given the world to ask so much in return? I
could disintegrate into a heap of dust, for all the world cares,
and that's as it should be. "
― Sally Rooney , Beautiful World, Where Are You
99
" But it also strikes me that the idea of 'conservatism' is in itself false, because nothing can be conserved, as such - time moves in one direction only, I mean. This idea is so basic thaat when I first thought of it, I felt very brilliant, and then I wondered if I was an idiot. But does it make some sense to you? We can't conserve anything, and especially not social relations, without altering their nature, arresting some part of their interaction with time in an unnatural way. Just look at what conservatives make of the enviornment: their idea of conservation is to extract, pillage and destroy, 'because that's what we've always done' - but because of that very fact, it's no longer the same earth we do it to. I suppose you think this is all extremely rudimentary and maybe even that I'm un-dialectical. But these are just the abstract thoughts I had, which I needed to write down, and of which you find yourself the (willing or unwilling) recipient. "
― Sally Rooney , Beautiful World, Where Are You