This is, perhaps, one of my favourite inspirational quotes. I actually have it on the wall in my dorm so I can see it on the way out each morning. I love the idea between madness being defined, according to Kerouac's quote, as this need to do something. Madness as the idea of action rather than inaction or living in patterns predetermined by other people.
There was a portion of the essay that was read in class yesterday that really stuck out to me. It reminded me a lot of what Daniel Quinn pointed out in Ishmael, when he was talking about how humans move from one box to another. It was the portion where the woman would get in her car to drive a quarter of a mile to the gym to walk on a treadmill. To me, this behaviour is starting to define America. It makes me incredibly sad because, in the sixties, I feel as though the above quote fit really well into that particular generation. The hippies were in the midst of a revolution and the government was at war in Vietnam. Today, we lack this burning desire to be mad to live and talk and breathe. Instead, we merely go through the motions. It makes me sad how many people never do the things they want to in life. My grandma is in her sixties and her entire life, prior to February, she had never left the country. Though she had always wanted to, she never took the opportunity to until after she realised that she was old and would actually die. Then she decided she had to make up for lost time. Now she is more active than most people my age. When I am around her, I wonder if it's going to take our generation just as long to realise that the time we have here is now and we should experience everything possible as the opportunity arises instead of merely succumbing to the societal expectations that are placed upon us.
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