Book Review: The Old Man and the Sea

(Image from Life)

Okay, this is not really a book review, but it is about a book. Or is it about me? Probably more of the latter than the former, but that's how it goes when you substitute keeping a diary for keeping a blog.

After two or three days of feeling miserable for reasons some might find ridiculous meditations (why worry about things you have no control over?), I came home tonight and put myself to bed with a book -- Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I haven’t read it before, but knew about the bleak ending. What a fitting book to read, I was thinking earlier today when I went to a bookshop to order for another book, but also in search of this one. A book with a bleak ending to match my current state of cheerlessness. There might be a lesson to learn from it, I thought, and maybe gain some hope in a hopeless world. And if no hope is to gained, at least I had the fellowship of another suicidal writer. (No, I have not been contemplating suicide; however, I was still awake at 5 AM the previous morning contemplating the purpose of life -- not the meaning of life; I think I've worked that one out already.)

I read it. Learned more than one lesson. And although the ending is as I knew it would be, I gained some hope.

My view of the world is not less miserable after reading The Old Man and the Sea; but I did become a little more convinced that the battles, the lonesome battles, the personal battles, even the losing battles, are worth fighting.