Column from The Clinton News

~ ~ ~ My column from The Clinton News this week ~ ~ ~

Life's a matter of perspective

By Robert Chapman
Clinton News

I try to piece things in my life together so they'll make sense. My wife is working on her master's degree in history, and I get the honor of proofreading her writings.

When you're doing a research paper or gathering sources for an article, you're always looking for the "I did" statement. How do you know Jim Bob was at the gas station with a gun? Well, when he said, "I was at the gas station, and had the gun in my jacket," that sort of gives it away.

I studied English in school, and trying to find something for a subjective argument is completely different than nailing down that fact.

When you're trying to find some sort of thought-provoking line to capture the milieu of a work, you tend to steer away from those "I did" statements.

Take for instance in Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. The topic brought up is bigotry: "To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy."

This statement opens your mind to question of whether bigotry is actually wrong. According to this statement it's not. But if your belief is a fraction off, and you have even one teeny-tiny bit of wrong in your certainty, then you're hateful.

Hatefulness is wrong, like racism: bigotry at its finest.

My freshman year of college was entertaining, to say the least. Each night, all my friends were on the same dorm floor, entertainment was across the hall, gatherings were within walking distance and idle time seemed to be nonexistent. Fun was mine to be had.

Then came the summer.

I was so bored with all my free time. I had only my thoughts with which to fill my time. Sure, books and movies that had been awarded with praises were in the corner of my room, but for the first few weeks I chose to sit. I was so used to the constant "city never sleeps" mentality.

For those of us who have lived in the United States between 1920 and now, we've known some pretty bad times, but we've also known extremely prosperous times and have gotten too attached to that good way of life.

But economics enters, and we're suddenly violated.

Newscast after newscast shows one company imploding while another one is on the verge of a meltdown, and much like my entertaining freshman year, we seemed to have a need to get our fill of bad news. I know I have.

I show up to work every day, and I fall into this hole. What company has capsized today? What shocking story is going to pop up on the Web sites? What bombshell will be dropped in my own work place? And it hits me every time: I'm subconsciously hoping for a walloping bit of drama to rock my relatively normal day.

Sure, we say we're tired of only hearing bad news, but if there were no news, what would we do? It happens all the time.

Think about when Britney Spears went crazy and shaved her head. That was news? No, but that's what the newspapers were talking about. Why? Because, relatively speaking, nothing else was happening.

Is anything absolute? I can't answer that question without instantly being proven wrong.

You have to alter your outlook on life to find the good in everything. I want to be one of those people. It's difficult, but I'm trying.