Things coming round

Clearly I haven't written here in too long. I apologize to my intrepid readers.

It isn't as though there hasn't been anything exciting going on.

I must also apologize to my future-self for not having documented the birth and first weeks of my son's life. It has been quite an experience to have a child. I'm responsible for more than just myself, which is not and unscary thought.

But what I came here to write isn't anything profound like that but only a passage I read lately that stuck with me.

I'm reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens on the recommendation of my mother-in-law after having enjoyed Moby-Dick, The House of the Seven Gables, and various other "classic" books. I've been enjoying it for the most part though, and this is strange to me because of my experience in reading epic fantasy, I'm having a bit of trouble keeping all of the characters straight.

Multiple disparate threads of the story are seemingly coming together ever so slowly as characters from one thread are starting to interact with those in other threads. Dickens did a nice thing in giving his characters unique, funny, and even descriptive names, but for some reason it isn't helping very much.

Anyway, the book was published in 1852 and 1853 and it was amazing to read something that must have been true back then but still so very true today and that hits home in my own life. I suppose that is what helps make something a classic.

Here is the setup and the passage:
Three men, Mr. Smallweed, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Jobling are having dinner and afterwards turn to Mr. Jobling's prospects. Mr. Jobling has come into a streak of bad luck lately and has been leeching off of Mr. Smallweed for food and drink all evening. In the discussion Jobling utters this line followed by the narrator's commentary.

"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.
That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular!

It is so true! So many people, myself included, just sit "content" in their lives and wait for things to get better. (But then complain when nothing improves and complain when things go better for others) How many of us, if we're really honest, really work at making things better? I know I usually don't. But those times that I did, things did improve. Or wonderful things happened. It is a lesson I need to continually remind myself of. Sometimes you need to take your life and beat it in to the shape you'd like instead of merely waiting for it to come round.