I don't really care that much when other people express strong emotions about things I don't share, I guess, but I really dislike it when I feel that I'm expected to join in
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A news writer I used to babysit for wrote this article, which is about a Detroit couple that gave birth the same day as the Duchess. This kid will probably affect my life more, seeing as he's in the same metropolitan area as me and I might run into him some day. Anyway, it absolutely made my day.
"I've never understood the hysteria that the passing away of so called celebrities causes."
because they might have impacted your life in a deep way: given hope, given inspiration, brought friends together, their works given joy and entertainment through times of struggle, sometimes even the will to live. and if not to you, personally, then to many others - because that's what happens when someone gets famous. their lives and influence spread wide. and when they die, there's a void created.
Yeah, my mum likes to bring up sad things she's heard on the news with me but, if I let myself care about every single person dying to the point that I cry, then I'm just going to feel even worse than I do all the time.
I live in a Commonwealth country and I still don't give a fig about the baby. I actually didn't even care when my sister-in-law had a baby (which I do feel guilty about especially as I still don't care about him except in the sense that my mum cares about him). I actually get disproportionately angry about knowing when a celebrity has a baby or what they've called it. I don't even care about celebrity couples that much.
I actually enjoy it when celebrity couples give their kids weird names, but that's about it. Could care less if they have babies. I might have been interested if THE ROYAL BABY had a cool archaic name like Aethelbert, but they gave him a boring name I don't even remember.
I think it's pretty OK not to care much if a relative you don't really see has a kid. Honestly, I can't connect with babies much--when the kids are older, I start to care, because either they're an interesting person or a pain in the ass (OK, sometimes both). But I guess I don't have any instinctive interest in babies.
Oh, yeah, I do enjoy that too, actually! And I enjoy how angry people get over the weird names.
Yeah, my brother was in the arm when I was a child so I didn't see him much from birth to age four and then not AT ALL for eight years and even after that he still lived interstate for a long time. So it's really hard for me to connect to him as a brother, I think. Er, sorry - but, yeah, I don't have any instinctive interest in babies, either.
I'm also really glad I'm not a baby or small child now because the thought of hundreds of baby photos of me online, done without my permission, makes me feel weird but that's a whole other thing than what we're talking about here.
I'd be scared to say this out loud, but on a course recently one of the guys talked about "grief-surfing" and "emotional snot" and I think those terms well cover the distaste I feel at some of the outpourings of grief over the deaths of strangers.
We see it here after accidents, when people who have not known the victim, turn up with flowers and wail publicly.
I'd always just assumed that I was too repressed, but I think the guy on the course summed it up well, and I think your attitude is the healthy one.
I have no idea. Especially Americans. The British Royal Family seems like the last remaining vestige of some kind of fairytale we have some connection to, maybe?
Sometimes in these circumstances, the way the robots choose to feel is the more genuine. Because the whole celebrity thing hinges on an image that is still just an image, and much of the adoration is in people trying to imagine that they belong somewhere in it. It will never work, there is no personal connection to celebrities unless you talk with them, and if there is any connection to be made it is through their art.
Which makes me a bit weirded out that when I read up on King Hussein of Jordan the other day I started to cry when I got to the bit about Israel betraying agreements. It was the most tenuous of connections: his great-uncle's friend's memoirs for goodness sake, but suddenly I recognized the same thing Lawrence had described about Feisal protecting guests who had killed his friends in this grandson of Abdullah warning his betrayers about the coming Yom Kippur war. I don't know these people, I don't know why I cried except through the voice of one poet long dead.
*hugs* Actually, that's very sweet, I think. I don't think it's weird. You recognized a connection to something you do truly care about, and the legacy of a family whose lives you were invested in, even through just reading about them through someone else's eyes, in a moment that got to you. That is touching.
Which is very much the purpose of the art of memoir. It takes these things, events and people, which others might never have reason to care about and brings those others to a point at which they care from the same perspective as the author instead of themselves.
I doubt anyone could do that for you and the royal baby, but in a much feebler manner, it is the same thing you obnoxious acquaintances are attempting to do.
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because they might have impacted your life in a deep way: given hope, given inspiration, brought friends together, their works given joy and entertainment through times of struggle, sometimes even the will to live. and if not to you, personally, then to many others - because that's what happens when someone gets famous. their lives and influence spread wide. and when they die, there's a void created.
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I live in a Commonwealth country and I still don't give a fig about the baby. I actually didn't even care when my sister-in-law had a baby (which I do feel guilty about especially as I still don't care about him except in the sense that my mum cares about him). I actually get disproportionately angry about knowing when a celebrity has a baby or what they've called it. I don't even care about celebrity couples that much.
In short, this post speaks to me.
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I think it's pretty OK not to care much if a relative you don't really see has a kid. Honestly, I can't connect with babies much--when the kids are older, I start to care, because either they're an interesting person or a pain in the ass (OK, sometimes both). But I guess I don't have any instinctive interest in babies.
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Yeah, my brother was in the arm when I was a child so I didn't see him much from birth to age four and then not AT ALL for eight years and even after that he still lived interstate for a long time. So it's really hard for me to connect to him as a brother, I think. Er, sorry - but, yeah, I don't have any instinctive interest in babies, either.
I'm also really glad I'm not a baby or small child now because the thought of hundreds of baby photos of me online, done without my permission, makes me feel weird but that's a whole other thing than what we're talking about here.
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We see it here after accidents, when people who have not known the victim, turn up with flowers and wail publicly.
I'd always just assumed that I was too repressed, but I think the guy on the course summed it up well, and I think your attitude is the healthy one.
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Which makes me a bit weirded out that when I read up on King Hussein of Jordan the other day I started to cry when I got to the bit about Israel betraying agreements. It was the most tenuous of connections: his great-uncle's friend's memoirs for goodness sake, but suddenly I recognized the same thing Lawrence had described about Feisal protecting guests who had killed his friends in this grandson of Abdullah warning his betrayers about the coming Yom Kippur war. I don't know these people, I don't know why I cried except through the voice of one poet long dead.
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I doubt anyone could do that for you and the royal baby, but in a much feebler manner, it is the same thing you obnoxious acquaintances are attempting to do.
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