This is G.K. Chesterton. He was born in 1874 and he writes books and essays. ya, ya sure point and laugh at the English major for blogging about some old guy that no one ever heard about, but really he's great! I just finished reading a book of his "The Man Who Was Thursday". He is what I like to call an eternal optimist... thats why I love him and what he writes.
Also (and this is getting back to the original purpose for this post) he wrote an essay entitled "On running After One's Hat". I was given a copy of this short essay once in a class and I carry it around with me where ever I go (really I do, in my green paper organizer that katie gave me for one of my birthdays... along with other great things). The essay is something he wrote in response to some floods in London. I wish I could just post the whole thing but I will give a short excerpt
"The true optimist who sees in such things an oppurtunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible than the ordinary "indignant ratepayer" who sees in them an opportunity for grumbling...
"For instance there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one's hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well ordered and pious mind? not merely because it is running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat...
"There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after ones hat, and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are comic- eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are exactly the things most worth doing- such as making love ( hey, he said it, not me) . A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife...
" An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
an inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. The water that girdled the houses and shops of London must, if anything, have only increased their previous witchery and wonder. For as the Roman Catholic preist in the story said: "Wine is good with everything except water," and on similar principle, water is good with everything except wine."
O.K. so that was sort of a long excerpt... I just really love it. If you hated it send me hate mail or something, but for heaven's sake have some adventures!
