I recently read the novel Revolutionary Road. It is about to be released as a film and I have a small obsession about reading a book before I see a “based on” flick. For those of you who know me the reason I want to see this film should be painfully obvious.
http://www.revolutionaryroadmovie.com/ It's not a happy story. In spite of the fact that it was written in the early 60s, there is the definite tone of a bitter Gen-X writer. It is about the epidemic of settling.
Everybody does it of course, settling, that is. The problem arises when someone who has settled fails to be able to effectively lie to themselves. Both characters in the book are painfully aware that they are not where they want to be in life but April Wheeler is much worse at lying to herself than her husband is.
In the end, April meets the kind of fate that's acceptable for the unhappy, settled wife. I've noticed that buying sports cars, philandering and taking up high risk activities are not considered socially acceptable behaviour for women going through the “mid-life crisis” the way they are for men. I think women are supposed to lose themselves in romance novels and take yoga lessons. I don't know really, not being very good at socially acceptable myself.
I have no real wisdom about what makes people settle and why everybody is unable to break the cycle. I think Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant showed remarkable insight into the problem when they wrote for their characters in The Office. The following two bits of script are from the final episode of the series when two of the main characters are desperately trying to convince themselves that they're happy about their lives (if you haven't seen the original BBC “The Office”, I highly recommend that you do).
TIM:
“You know I don't give myself a hard time about things particularly. Thirty is young now anyway. I'm not someone who has specific goals about, you know, having done this or that by my age: “I should've done this, why haven't I taken that chance?” I just think, well, if you look at life like rolling a dice then my situation now, as it stands, yeah, it may only be a three. If I jack that in now, go for something bigger and better, yep, I could easily roll a six, no problem. I could roll a six; I could also roll a one, okay? So I think sometimes just leave the dice alone.”
DAWN:
“A real relationship isn't like a fairy-tale. If you think that for the next forty years every time you see each other you're gonna glow, or, you know, every time you hold hands there's gonna be electricity, then you're kidding yourself, really. What about reliability, or someone paying the mortgage, or someone who's never been out of work? Those are the more important practical things, you know, in reality.”
I'm not sure there's a real moral in Revolutionary Road but the moral of this blog entry is don't read the book if you're trying to beat the winter blues.