More to reality than realism

I think I've worked out at least a partial reason to why I don't read as much as I used to before. Similarly, there are some things that I just don't get...

For me, literature has been always essentially about escapism. It's been about wonderful worlds and wonderful characters who lead wonderful lives that balance out some of the less-than-wonderful aspects of this world and allow me to disregard them, leading a daily life in peace and if not ignorance, then in the act of avoiding looking things I know about.

And then came along our delightful school and I stepped into an age where the general mentality is that books and stories should mean things, and should have a clear message and should convey images and make readers think. We have studied novels such as Montana 1948, All Quiet on the Western Front and other such depressingly accurate descriptions of the anguish of humanity, and then forced to look into them in an even deeper level, that I am beginning to feel slightly sick. Maybe this is because of an overdose today, having that lecture on Gattaca, a film which is based on the use of eugenics, today, alongside with some deeper peeks into a few short stories that talk about the aimlessness and hopelessness in youth.

It just seems that in each literary subject, the curriculum is thrusting more and more misery at the students, this being us. How am I supposed to keep a smile on my face and a positive outlook on life when I'm told that some kids have it really hard - that most kids have it really hard in their heads - and that the future may turn out grim if we don't do something about it (and that something we've got to do about it is never told), and that we're supposed to find some universal answer to all of this through wracking our immature brains for great answers.

I don't know if other people are having such a problem with the context essays, but for me, questions such as "multiple realities can exist in one society" and "justice is incidental to law and order" make me want to cry. Of course there are other realities, but there's no need to go into deeper analysis about it - let there be other realities, and leave the other realities in peace. The question on justice is an even more abstract one, something that caused me even more heartache earlier in the year - I do not even know what is right, and here I am, having to write a discussion about how the truth and some order I do not quite grasp (oh, it seems that a prevalent theme is the whole the-government-is-watching-what-will-you-do; maybe the curriculum is obsessed with freedom).

All I'm asking is what's the point. What does the curriculum want me to do? Do the people who write up the curriculum not understand how mentally challenging and impossible tasks they set for us? Is it just me that's having such a huge problem with it, and what's wrong with me for having this problem with it?

Also, why is it that the world seems to be such a crooked place that high schoolers under the physically mature age (and in an mentally very unstable and immature age - maybe the figure of rapidly increasing pressure in education and the rapidly increasing rates of depression in youth have some correlation) have to be taught that there are things fucked up and there are things that are more fucked up than others and all that is left is to choose the things that are the least fucked up.

I don't want to live in a world where I need to be enlightened of this. I don't want to have to listen to this at school, since I've always known - I've cried to my mother, how can they go to wars, how can they just kill each other like that? So maybe I'm a softie, and maybe I laugh and cry because of the most trivial of things, but how honestly could it ever be possible for one human being to kill another? I may be naïve, and I may be well and truly innocent, but I seriously do not understand. I don't understand the hatred and malevolence that goes on here -I mean, I do confess to hating some people because of their opinions, well, "hating", because my temper flares abruptly and then settles back down, and my rational mind reminds me that not everybody sees things the way I do. But I would not want to hurt them for that. It aggravates me, people with opinions that are narrow-minded but very loud and articulated (and sometimes opinions like that happen by accident, for the lack of a better way to describe it, and I understand that), but I wouldn't want to shut them up just for speaking their mind. In most cases, it's not their fault they don't know any better.

And I don't know if or not I know better than them, since I don't know what they know and I'm not entirely sure of what I know, either.

What I know is that English and Literature are making me steadily depressed. I hardly read anymore, because I am scared I will run into one of these great discussions of life - I am afraid I will be run into this mode of thought I am caught in, right now. There's nothing good in the depths of realism in the dark way everybody really wants to portray it. I say that the whole definition of adding realism into your work is bullshit. Everything that is "real" is defined by how you see it - and if you want to paint it in an overly complicated and a black hue, of course it will turn overly complicated and hopeless and pointless and otherwise difficult.

There's more to reality than realism, goddamnit! It's just that everybody is so much in love with their own voice nowadays, and it's popular to hate something and love something else and to spark hatred over the things you love, because nationalism is losing its grip. I'm a part of most of these movements, of course, how can I not be - I wish I would not be, and I wish it wouldn't have to be this way. I wish people could realise that there's more to it than they can see and I wish they could glimpse the same potential to happiness as I can. It just doesn't help, all this talk about depressing imagery and... and...

My God, please give me strength.

p.s. to some of my readers who cannot read emotions from between the lines, don't tell me I'm a softie or that I'm taking something too seriously, because I really don't need that right now.