Looking For Alaska
“It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska
Looking For Alaska. What a lovable book. This is the one book that I can really relate to. Not just to Pudge, not just to Colonel, but also to Alaska. I must have said this a thousand times, but my love for Alaska Young is much deeper than those I have with "real" people, be it my family, my friends ( sorry ) and everything else that comes in between. John Green, in this sense is a literal genius.
That is why, I was excited for The Fault In Our Stars, though I did not particularly enjoyed the book. Maybe it was over-hyped, maybe it was cheesy, it wasn't great. I mean, it wasn't so bad that I had to leave the cinema halfway through ( no thanks to you Wall Street : Money Never Sleeps ) . Mind you, I may have not enjoyed TFIOS ( the book ) as much as I did with Looking For Alaska or Paper Town, John Green is an amazing writer and everything he touches turns to literal gold. I yearn to be John Green.
At the start of the book, Pudge, quoting Francois Rabelais's last words, he said he was there "To seek a Great Perhaps" , which essentially means he's there to have an adventure. I'm
“I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life..”Maybe that was what's holding back to write a book. An actual book with my own fictional characters to love. Maybe that is the source of my procrastination back then. How ironic is it? To procrastinate my own Great Perhaps. Fret not though, I've actually started the first step. I've done some planning to it. Though, no actual writing as of yet. There won't be some until quite some time due to the bloody exam but it'll come soon. It'll come before I leave.
“Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.”What I fear is when I've actually written the book. By writing the book, will I have left a mark on the world? Will I have achieved the Great Perhaps that I have so longed for? Thus, will my purpose in this life fulfilled and I'm now allowed to go? The book , Looking For Alaska is separated into two parts, before and after. For the sake of not spoiling you, a significant thing happened in between the two timeline and I fear I might follow suit.
To be frank, I have not been feeling too well these days. In fact, it has been months and I'm not feeling any better. Sure, there's a couple of days when it all seemed to go away but it eventually finds its way back to my conscious mind. I'm constantly tired. I'm constantly haunted by the lost thoughts. Take today for example, I took a nice long sleep and did nothing that could sap my energy. All I did today was played a couple of games, re-read Looking For Alaska, occupy myself with some anime and eventually went out for a run. Mind you, I was feeling incredibly sleepy before I decided to go out for a run. I refuse to give in to a fictional fatigue. I fear that if I'd give in, I would never wake up.
It's not time yet.
“Muhammad brought the promise that anyone could find fulfillment and everlasting life through allegiance to the one true God. The Buddah held out hope that the suffering could be transcended. Jesus brought the message that even the last shall be first, that even the tax collectors and lepers - the outcasts - had cause for hope. And so that is the question I leave you with in this final: What is your cause for hope.”
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