Class Post II 4/28/10 Section G

While I was reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, one story about a woman who drinks vodka in order to rid of stage fright so that she can play the piano in front of a crowd made me think of one thing: getting/being drunk. I don't know what it is like to be drunk. I don't know if I would be able to digest what someone says or tells me when I am drunk. Or how I'd be thinking differently. I can't imagine the feeling of not knowing what is going on around me, or my reality, if I am drunk. But in a way, isn't getting drunk to be away from reality? I guess I'm so protective of what is going on around me, my reality, that I can't let it go. What do you think?

And Olive Kitteridge. I think we have all been Olive Kitteridge during some period of our lives. We feel unappreciated, and we show negativity, but we are all good-hearted in whatever we were trying to express. Through those experiences, we change. We become better and accept more easily. We find mysteries about ourselves and others that we can't figure out and wish we just had answers to. But we learn that not everything has an answer, at least not an answer that is definite. What matters is virtue, spontaneity, love, trust, faith, and so on. We find answers in those things. And we need to believe and fight on.