A Synopsis Which Will Spoil the Ending For You
Silas is a lonely weaver who prefers to be left alone. Through hard work he gradually collects a fortune but one day a rich man's son, having squandered a lot of money entrusted to him, wanders into Marner's cottage while the weaver is away and discovers the lonely man's fortune and steals it. The thief disappears, so his brother inherits their father's fortune... but this brother is not without blemish either, for he has a daughter he doesn't want anyone to know about because the mother is an opium addict of poor reputation. He's relieved when the mother dies from illness which frees him up to marry the woman he longs for. The little girl is then discovered by Marner the weaver and he adopts her. She becomes to him more precious than the fortune he lost. At the end of the book the body of the thief brother is discovered in a swamp less than a mile from Marner's cottage along with the gold he'd stolen. The money is given back to the weaver. By this time the little girl has blossomed into a happy beautiful young woman and her true father wishes to assume the role that biologically has been his all along. So he comes to visit Marner trying to persuade him to relinquish the daughter.So I watched the movie and I'm thinking how insane is it that this rich man would come over to the cottage and begin by apologizing on behalf of his brother for the theft of the weaver's fortune many years prior and then promptly endeavors to steal a much greater fortune, the lovely daughter!
But despicable as it was, I had to admit it didn't seem unrealistic. That's because lately I find myself particularly aware of how despicable people, in general, can be. Just an example, yesterday while approaching the parking garage where I work I stopped for two pedestrians crossing the street, a man and a woman. It seemed to me they were intentionally walking as slow as humanly possible. This kind of thing makes my vision go red and even white hot... for all the world like the planet belonged to them and it was my special privilege to have the pleasure of waiting for them to get the bloody fuck out of my way.
Now, there was a time when I could overlook anyone's faults just by reminding myself of the hell it seems each person has to endure at one point or another in their lives. Life isn't easy for any of us, I used to think, and so I would feel a brotherly compassion for virtually everyone. Shall I blame it on the aging process that I am no longer so understanding? Is that a part of growing older that I reach this point where I think, no, it hasn't got anything to do with your rotten childhood that you treat people the way you do, it's merely that you utterly suck!
I know people that seem to maintain a more even keel... like this one fellow, Chris that I play volleyball with at the YMCA. I don't know him real well, but I'm so irritable when I play because the egos out there exacerbate my equanimity righteously. I hate how people will critique my performance after every play. I mean in volleyball you make mistakes all the time... everyone does... I mean one team or the other is going to come up on the short end of every play so I'm like do we really want to articulate whose fault it is each and every time? To put this in perspective... I'm going on about 200 hours of volleyball with these people and I still haven't critiqued anyone after any single play. Certainly I've thought to myself on countless occasions "Gee, would it kill you to take at least one step toward making a play there?" but I don't say anything because... what the hell good does it do? Anyway... Chris plays with the same stupid cast of characters just about as frequently as I do and I notice how it doesn't seem to get to him. He has a way of shrugging it off... you know... not sweating the small stuff... and you know... I admire his style and maybe I'm learning from it too... hopefully.
But still I wonder if others have noticed this about growing older... that you lose a little of your inclination to give people a little slack and you begin to see assholes as assholes instead of people who are probably having a bad day.I'm opposed to making the aging process any easier than it already is. Like Sophia Loren, I believe if you feel aches and pains and soreness in your joints when you get up out of your seat, you have to just spring up like a kid anyway because once you surrender to that feeling of getting old, that's precisely when you get old. So... carrying that to my attitude... I think I'm going to have to fight that disgust with people that I've been cultivating. I'm going to have to.... groan.... be nice to people I can't stand.
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