Ms. Healey had the class read an excerpt from The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf the other day, and I must admit that I could relate myself to the work.  We related the paragraph to The Secret Agent, however, I related it to myself.

I found that the reading had a very blatant message: do not be the ordinary.

Cliché?  Yes, it is. But, that isn't the point.  Woolf discusses that the current fiction of her time became plain and unimaginative.  She mentions that life is not a series of symmetrical street lamps, but instead a luminous halo.  This had a much deeper meaning to me.

Do not be the ordinary... What does that mean?  What is ordinary? Why not be ordinary?

The answers are found within each of us, and they may be different, but they may also be the same.  My own view, though, is to not conform.  Do not let others shape the kind of person that you want to be.  In this world, this society that we live in, we focus too much on what really will not matter a few years down the road.  If something interests you, chase it.  Do not let somebody stand in your way just because they think it's weird.  Man, you get one chance to shape your future.  You don't get to redo it.  I find that too many of us take life for granted.  Too many of us need to look ahead, need to realize the opportunities we need to take advantage of and the relationships we need to treasure and form.  Life will go by faster than the blink of an eye, and when it does, it's over.  You cannot get it back, so do not waste time; If you want something done, go do it.  You cannot let others shape the outcome of your existence.  Follow your own path and let others judge you.

After reading the excerpt, I went online at home and read a few short stories that Woolf wrote.  I read A Haunted House, Monday or Tuesday, and Blue and Green.  I found each of the three to be bizarre with their own sort of moral at the end.  I found them to be short, sweet, and to the point.  The sentences were packed with long words, yet the flow of the read seemed just fine to me (only a few words threw me off!).  I felt a little uneasy reading these, a little eerie perhaps.  I cannot explain why exactly, there was just something about the style that struck me in a funny way.

At the end of the day, Woolf writes in a way that it takes emotion to understand and grasp what she wants the reader to take away from reading the work.  I admire and appreciate this, and I am glad I had the opportunity to read some of her works.