Contents
Why did nobody tell me this before summary?
From managing anxiety, dealing with criticism or battling low mood, to building self-confidence, finding motivation or learning to forgive yourself, this book tackles the everyday issues that affect us all and offers easy, practical solutions that might just change your life.
How come no one ever told me that?
In How Come No One Told Me That?, bestselling author Prakash Iyer shares the stories and observations that have made an immense impact on his life. The book is divided into ten sections, exploring life lessons, ways of improving oneself, leadership and the importance of doing small things right, among other subjects.
How does no one is talking about this end?
Overview – Patricia Lockwood published the novel No One Is Talking About This in 2021. Lockwood is a poet known for her short-form poetry posted on Twitter and her memoir Priestdaddy (2017). No One Is Talking About This, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, depicts an unnamed protagonist navigating a life devoted to maintaining an online presence through social media and blog posts.
When her sister’s unborn child is diagnosed with Proteus syndrome, the protagonist puts her online life on hold to support her family. This summary uses the paperback edition published in February 2022. Page numbers correspond to this version. The unnamed female protagonist of No One Is Talking About This is an influencer on the portal, the word she uses to describe the online social media, news, and blog sources that she obsessively follows.
After rising to fame in the portal, the protagonist becomes a public speaker and teacher focusing on questions the portal presents to modern global society. She lives with her husband in an unspecified city and spends her days keeping track of trends in the portal and debating American conservatives online.
In Part 1 of the novel, the protagonist struggles with her increasing sense of physical and mental dissociation caused by spending so much time on the portal. She is often disturbed by friends “disappearing” from the portal but at the same time is intrigued by their ability to separate themselves from life online.
She asks her husband for a safe in which to lock her phone, but after two days her resolve breaks, and she desperately pleads with her husband to return her phone. The brief moments of celebrity that the protagonist experiences when one of her posts in the portal does well are her primary source of self-confidence and contentment.
- In Part 2, the protagonist’s posts have made her a celebrity, and she travels the globe to speaking events.
- She then receives a text message from her mother saying that something has gone wrong with her sister’s pregnancy and asking her to return to her childhood home as soon as possible.
- The protagonist promptly puts her life on hold and joins her family in Ohio.
She learns that her unborn niece has Proteus syndrome, a severe condition characterized by asymmetrical and rapid bodily growth and the inability to form neural synapses. The sister’s pregnancy threatens her life, but Ohio’s conservative reproductive laws determine that she is too far into her pregnancy for an abortion.
Though the protagonist and her sister briefly consider driving to another state for an abortion, the sister decides against this as it would irrevocably separate her from their conservative parents. The protagonist moves in with her sister and is there for the baby’s birth. The baby lives despite the predictions of the doctors.
She infant is admitted to intensive care at the hospital, where the protagonist, the sister, and their parents spend each day. Since the baby’s birth, the protagonist has stepped back from the portal and no longer identifies with the issues under debate.
Her sole focus is her family and, especially, the baby. Soon, they move the baby from the hospital to the sister’s home. Though the baby suffers from seizures and inconsistent health, the family does all they can to comfort her, including a trip to Disney World. None of the family posts about the baby in the portal.
The sister attempts to write a letter to her state representative about the cost of her healthcare and her inability to work after pregnancy. However, the letter is never sent. The infant dies at six months old. The protagonist and her family are devastated.
After they hold a funeral for the child and celebrate her life, the protagonist finds that she cannot return to her old life and her obsession with the portal. The baby made her realize the importance of a life offline, one with meaning and purpose. The protagonist is invited to speak about the portal at the British Museum but fails to deliver an authentic speech as she is no longer invested in the topic.
After the speech, she is invited to a busy club where her phone is stolen. The protagonist sees the theft happening but does not intervene, hoping the pictures of the baby on her phone will spread hope and love among the people who may see them. Related Titles By Patricia Lockwood Featured Collections
What is the plot of the book Mr Nobody?
Book Blurb: – A man lacking identification and unable to speak is found semiconscious on a British beach and immediately draws national press as Mr. Nobody. But when neuropsychiatrist Dr. Emma Lewis is invited to assess him, she discovers he does recall something about her own past that no one else knows.
Why do I always read the end of a book first?
I’ve been a voracious book reader for as long as I can remember. More specifically, I’ve been a voracious happily-ever-after book reader, moving from Meg Cabot and Sarah Dessen in my tweens to Sophie Kinsella in college to Helen Hoang and Jasmine Guillory today.
- But no matter what book I’m reading, there’s one thing I always, enthusiastically do: I read the ending first.
- Some might argue that knowing the ending takes away from the reading experience, but I find that it actually enhances it for me.
- I know, I know, I may as well be committing a crime in some reading circles.
Some might argue that knowing the ending takes away from the reading experience, but I find that it actually enhances it for me. Before I commit to a book, I’ll often pore through pages of reviews to glean any bits about the plot that I can. I’ll research the author and other books they’ve written.
I’ll see what similar titles are recommended if I like this one. Once I get my hands on the book, I’ll skim it and quickly read the last page. After all, if I’ve done this much research before deciding to dive in, what’s one more step to ensure it’s the right read for me? Even science agrees with me — a 2011 study from UC San Diego’s psychology department found that readers who knew how a story would end actually enjoyed the story more than those who didn’t.
Still not quite convinced? Here are a few more reasons why I’m firmly on Team Read Endings First.
Why did nobody tell me this before quotes?
Find & Share Quotes with Friends Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Julie Smith 19,703 ratings, 3.91 average rating, 1,922 reviews Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Quotes Showing 1-30 of 177 “Thoughts are not facts. They are a mix of opinions, judgements, stories, memories, theories, interpretations, and predictions about the future.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “The thing about the human brain is that, when you believe something, the brain will scan the environment for any signs that the belief is true.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “The more work we do on building self-awareness and resilience when all is well, the better able we are to face life’s challenges when they come our way.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “When we feel anxious about something, the most natural human response is to avoid it.
We know that if we stay away, we’ll feel safe, for now. But avoidance not only maintains anxiety, it makes it worse over time.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Something that I have come to realize over the years of working as a psychologist is how much people struggle with low mood and never tell a soul.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “You might notice that you feel the need for more reassurance from others when your mood is low.
If you don’t get that extra reassurance you might automatically assume that they are thinking negatively about you. But that is a bias, and it is quite possible that you are your worst critic.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Just as thoughts are not facts, feelings are not facts either.
- Emotions are information, but when that information is powerful, intense and loud, as emotions can be, then we are more vulnerable to believing in them as a true reflection of what is going on.
- I feel it therefore it must be a fact.
- Emotional reasoning is a thought bias that leads us to use what we feel as evidence for something to be true, even when there might be plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “If we associate failure with unworthiness, then starting anything new is going to feel overwhelming and procrastination will be front and centre.
We protect ourselves from the psychological threat of shame by sabotaging the process before it gets started.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Getting better at relationships does not mean learning how to get the other person to do or be what you want them to be.
- In couples therapy, you can work on your relationship together.
- But you can also work on your relationships by understanding your own individual needs and patterns and the cycles you tend to get stuck in.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Procrastination is something everyone does.
It’s when we put something off because the job we need to do triggers a stress reaction, or some other feeling that is aversive.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “we have to focus on making good decisions, not perfect decisions. A good decision is one that moves you in the direction you want to go.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “If we don’t do the work to develop self-acceptance, we set ourselves up to live a life in which we may need constant reassurance, get trapped in jobs we hate or relationships that cause us harm, or find ourselves living with resentment.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “When you are low on energy, the chance of exercising goes down, along with your mood.
- Low mood gives you the urge to do the things that make mood worse.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Grief is a normal part of human experience.
- It is a necessary process to go through when we experience the loss of someone or something that we loved, needed, felt connected to and that held meaning in our life.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “We naturally look for evidence that confirms our beliefs.
We then experience what we believe, even when there is evidence to suggest otherwise.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Allowing all thoughts to be present, but choosing which ones we give our time and attention to, can have a powerful impact on our emotional experience.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Not all low mood is unidentified dehydration, but when dealing with mood it is essential to remember that it’s not all in your head.
It’s also in your body state, your relationships, your past and present, your living conditions and lifestyle. It’s in everything you do and don’t do, in your diet and your thoughts, your movements and memories. How you feel is not simply a product of your brain.” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “Describe any significant events that happened.
What thoughts did you have at the time? How did that way of thinking impact on how you felt? Describe any emotions you noticed. What triggered those emotions? What urges did you have? How did you respond to the feeling? What were the consequences of your response?” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? “What are the first signs for you that emotional discomfort is present? Is it a behaviour? Do you recognize your blocking or protective behaviours? Where do you feel the emotion in your body? What thoughts are there? What beliefs are you buying into about this situation? What effect is that having on you?” ― Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Welcome back.
What is I’m so not over you about?
A chance to rewrite their ending is worth the risk in this swoony romantic comedy from Kosoko Jackson. It’s been months since aspiring journalist Kian Andrews has heard from his ex-boyfriend, Hudson Rivers, but an urgent text has them meeting at a café. Maybe Hudson wants to profusely apologize for the breakup.
What does no one told me nothing mean?
The expression is ‘Nobody tells me anything’ and is a complaint to mean you are kept uninformed. The expression ‘Nobody tells me nothing’ is a deliberate error to signify that the alleged speaker is so illiterate as to be a joke.
Can you be autistic and not realise?
“If you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person,” says Stephen Shore, Ed.D., president emeritus of the Asperger’s Association of New England, and advisory board member of the Autism Society, Signs of autism present themselves in each person in a different way.
How bad is undiagnosed autism?
What Happens If An Autistic Child Is Not Treated? – When children aren’t treated for their autism, they are at a bigger risk of not being properly educated, could hurt themselves or the people close to them, and might miss school altogether. This is considering milder cases.
- Some undiagnosed autistic children can talk well and never learn to.
- They may be left behind and be forced to repeat different grade levels, act out poorly when in school, and even be expelled if their behavior leads to physical harm to others or themselves.
- Because no therapy is given to those that do go undiagnosed, trouble with parents can occur.
A child may not have a proper diet and could become obese or underweight from a lack of healthy eating habits. Young people with ASD already struggle with food. When there’s no diagnosis, they may never learn how to eat properly, whereby parents may give in to specific meals they want just to keep them from acting out.
Poor motor abilities – Motor abilities, or motor skills, are functions where one must use their body to engage it, such as placing objects in a specific spot, walking, running, and moving in a specific way. When therapy is provided to people with autism, these skills are some of the first things taught and are crucial to their later development. Without them, a child is more likely to have problems knowing how to properly conduct themselves as it relates to their motor abilities. Even standing still for longer than a couple of minutes could become challenging.Poor social skills – When the peers of an undiagnosed autistic child come to them, the chances are high of the child showing body language that could come off as rude, indifferent, and even offensive. They may remove their clothing when it’s inappropriate for them to, such as in a classroom filled with other children or when out in public.Self-harm – With so many things going on that they cannot understand, like loud, overwhelming noises and crowded spaces, an undiagnosed child may know no other way of coping with it other than self-harm. When autistic children do this, they might bang their heads against a hard surface, pull at their hair, or even attempt to place dangerous objects in their mouths.
Is No One Is Talking About This a true story?
You Actually Will Be Talking About ‘No One Is Talking About This’ Writing is a calling for Patricia Lockwood, as she made clear in her sacred and profane, lyrical and bawdy 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy. While still in her teens, she took the vows of literature and became “a person who almost never left the house.” Art became her emissary.
She confessed: “This is the secret: when I encounter myself on the page, I am shocked at how forceful I seem. On the page I am strong, because that is where I put my strength.” Now Lockwood has put that strength into her first novel, No One is Talking About This, which leaves no doubt that she still takes her literary vocation seriously.
It’s another attention-grabbing mind-blower which toggles between irony and sincerity, sweetness and blight. Her unnamed narrator is a social media star who achieved prominence when her post, “Can a dog be twins?” went viral. This led to speaking engagements around the world, at one of which a man asks, “This is your contribution to society?” Even as Lockwood’s narrator acknowledges the difficulty of writing about what she calls “the portal” — especially without “a strong whiff of old white individuals being weird about the blues” — she attempts just that in the first half of this novel.
In the second half, the portal’s hold on her vaporizes when real life intrudes urgently, in terrible and but also surprisingly beautiful ways. Important lessons ensue. It’s another attention-grabbing mind-blower which toggles between irony and sincerity, sweetness and blight. Lockwood deftly captures a life lived predominantly online in the “blizzard of everything,” this “place of the great melting,” with its vapid, mind-numbing, addictive culture.
Her insider tour carefully showcases the “new shared sense of humor” and “elastic and snappable verbal play” that so insidiously morphs into jargon, dogma, and doctrine. This portrait of a disturbing world where the center will not hold is a tour de force that recalls Joan Didion’s portrait of the dissolute 1960s drug culture of Haight-Ashbury in her seminal essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” Like Didion — and Nora Ephron – Lockwood is a master of sweeping, eminently quotable proclamations that fearlessly aim to encapsulate whole movements and eras: “White people, who had the political educations of potatoes – lumpy, unseasoned, and biased toward the Irish – were suddenly feeling compelled to speak out about injustice.
This happened once every 40 years on average, usually after a period when folk music became popular again,” she writes. Unfortunately, much of her humor is too raunchy to be quoted here. Although written before the January 6th attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, there’s an eerie timeliness to Lockwood’s observations about the dark side of social media.
She addresses many of the issues raised by New York Times media columnist and former BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith in, in which he reminds us that “evil can just start with bad jokes and nihilistic behavior that is fueled by positive reinforcement on various platforms” and the “almost irresistible gravitational pull” of “getting more attention from more people than you ever have.” Lockwood’s media maven laments how a shared sense of irony and mockery turned on itself, and what was meant to be a source of connection and individuality became instead a disturbing source of disconnection, derision, and worse.
She writes of a generation that “had spent most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at the idiots who were stupid enough to think they meant it. Except after a while they did mean it, and then somehow at the end of it they were Nazis.” Readers may well wonder where Lockwood is going with this.
Some will be less charmed by the subversive humor than others. But hang in there. The novel shifts into another realm after the narrator receives a text from her mother about dire problems with her younger sister’s pregnancy. It’s a testament to her skills as a rare writer who can navigate both sleaze and cheese, jokey tweets and surprising earnestness, that we not only buy her character’s emotional epiphany but are moved by it.
In response to this wakeup call, Lockwood’s narrator becomes “a citizen of necessity.” She moves into the world of NICUs, a place where urgency is real, and wonders, “Why had she entered the portal in the first place? Because she wanted to be a creature of pure call and response: she wanted to delight and to be delighted.” Instead, she finds something far more affecting, and what results is a sort of conversion story in which sincerity supersedes irony.
“It was a marvel how cleanly and completely this lifted her out of the stream of regular life,” Lockwood writes. “She wanted to stop people on the street and say, ‘Do you know about this? You should know about this. No one is talking about this!'” Lockwood acknowledges that her novel is based on her niece’s heartbreaking case — the first person ever to be diagnosed in utero with Proteus Syndrome, a one-in-a-billion disorder whose most famous sufferer was the Elephant Man.
- It’s a testament to her skills as a rare writer who can navigate both sleaze and cheese, jokey tweets and surprising earnestness, that we not only buy her character’s emotional epiphany but are moved by it.
- Of course, people will be talking about this meaty book, and about the questions Lockwood raises about what a human being is, what a brain is, and most important, what really matters.
“What did we have the right to expect from this life?” her narrator asks. “What were the terms of the contract?, Could we, could we post about it?” : You Actually Will Be Talking About ‘No One Is Talking About This’
What happens at the end of no one will miss her?
Kat Rosenfield | No One Will Miss Her
Lizzie and her husband DwayneAdrienne and her husband EthanDetective Ian Bird Buy it on | Dark, deft, murderous, and witty, No One Will Miss Her tackles the thorny issues of identity and belonging at the heart of women’s lives.
On a beautiful October morning in rural Maine, a homicide investigator from the big city pulls into the hard-luck town of Copper Falls. The local junkyard is burning, and the town pariah Lizzie Oullette is dead—with her husband, Dwayne, nowhere to be found.
As scandal ripples through the community, Detective Ian Bird’s inquiries unexpectedly lead him away from small-town Maine to a swank city townhouse several hours south. Adrienne Richards, blonde and fabulous social media influencer and wife of a disgraced billionaire, had been renting Lizzie’s tiny lake house as a country getawayeven though Copper Falls is anything but a resort town.
As Adrienne’s connection to the case becomes clear, so too does her connection to Lizzie, who narrates their story from beyond the grave. Each woman is desperately lonely in her own way, and they navigate a relationship that cuts across class boundaries: transactional, complicated, and, finally, deadly. Lizzie is alive and well, which is why she is narrating the book. She killed Adrienne, not the other way around. They looked similar enough that Lizzie was able to take over Adrienne’s life, and no one was the wiser. We know that Lizzie and Dwayne did something to Ethan, but not exactly what.
Later, we find out that Ethan was killed in a fight with Dwayne. Lizzie and Dwayne left his body in Dwayne’s truck on Lizzie’s father’s land. They then set fire to it all to get her father the insurance claim. Lizzie did all this to cover up Dwayne’s mistake, but ended up killing him too because he couldn’t handle the pressure of covering up what had happened.
Lizzie seemingly gets away with it and runs into the detective years later in a bar in her hometown. Spoiler review: I loved the twist. Definitely wasn’t expecting it, at least not so early on. I thought it was very well done, and everything fell into place perfectly after that.
I felt like the very end of the book fizzled out a little bit since all the real action happened somewhat early on. The ending where she meets up with Ian didn’t really do it for me. It felt a little unbelievable that she’d get away with it completely. Thank you to Harper Audio for this advanced listener’s copy in exchange for an honest review.
No One Will Miss Her is one of those thrillers where the more I say, the more likely I am to spoil it. For that reason, I’m going to keep things short. To start, I love books that are narrated from beyond the grave. I think it’s such a fun way to tell a story, and obviously gives the reader a different and more omniscient perspective.
- This book was perfectly paced.
- I was never bored, and always interested to see what would happen next.
- While I didn’t connect with any of the characters, I was drawn in by their stories and histories and was compelled to find out what happened to them.
- Overall, I think some suspension of belief is required, but this is often the case with thrillers.
It wasn’t so unbelievable that I disliked the ending, but to enjoy thrillers you can’t really expect an ending to be both shocking and realistic. The narration was great and fitting for the characters. I have no real comments about the audiobook, which means it was top quality and a good match for the story.
I’m never sure what to say about audiobooks that I like–I feel like I only have comments on audio copies when there’s something wrong with it! This was my first book by this author, and as far as I can tell it’s her first thriller. I really hope she writes more in this genre, because I really enjoyed No One Will Miss Her,
TW: a graphic animal death scene, which I know is a big one for many people Follow me on ! Tagged,, The Plot (from Goodreads): Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are best friends—or were, as children. Despite drifting apart in adulthood, shared secrets The Book: Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll September 19, 2023 by S&S/ Marysue Rucci BooksDate read: May 23, 2023 The Characters: : Kat Rosenfield | No One Will Miss Her
What happens at the end of the book we are not from here?
Overview – We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez is a contemporary young adult novel first published in 2020. Although the book features elements of magical realism, the novel is primarily realistic in style, We Are Not from Here examines traumatic experiences of physical, emotional, and sexual violence as three unaccompanied minors travel from Guatemala to the US-Mexico border.
We Are Not from Here is a Pura Belpre Honor Book (2021). This guide references the 2020 edition by Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Pulga, a 15-year-old boy, was born and raised in the town of Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. He has two very close friends: Chico, 13, and Pequeña, 17. Chico is like a brother to Pulga, and lives with Pulga and Pulga’s mother as his own mother was killed two years before.
Pulga thinks of 17-year old Pequeña as a close cousin thanks to the friendship between their mothers. For years, Pulga has been learning about the migrant route toward the United States. He has maps and money hidden away for the day when he might have a chance to leave—or need to run.
- Rey Villa is an ex-convict who extorts money from local business owners in Puerto Barrios.
- When Pulga and Chico inadvertently witness a murder committed by Rey, they are forced into his service as unwilling henchmen.
- They cannot seek lawful help out of fear of revenge from Rey.
- Rey impregnated Pequeña through sexual assault and proposes to her after she gives birth.
Pequeña knows she must run away to escape him, and a vision tells Pequeña that Chico and Pulga are in danger as well. When Pequeña says that they have to leave, Pulga buys three bus tickets and the teenagers leave secretly in the middle of the night. Two bus rides get them to Tecún Umán where they cross Rio Suchiate into Mexico.
- The next day, they find a shelter for migrants where they hear about the dangers of La Bestia, the series of trains that migrants attempt to board to ride north.
- After a series of vans take them beyond immigration checkpoints, they arrive at a place where many other migrants are waiting for the train to leave.
They successfully board the first train and feel celebratory, but sober quickly, afraid to fall asleep and fall off La Bestia. When the train is approached by armed kidnappers, the migrants jump off while it is still moving. Chico suffers a concussion and the three teens must stay a week at a shelter where an aid worker, Soledad, tends to him.
Soledad tells Pequeña she must be strong and encourages her to think of a new identity. Pequeña chooses the name Flor. Pulga convinces Chico that they must keep going. After boarding and fleeing several more trains on the route, Chico is weak and sick. When the train suddenly slows, Chico tumbles off and is caught under the wheels.
Pequeña and Pulga jump off to find him and Chico dies in Pulga’s arms. At a shelter nearby a priest convinces Pulga to bury Chico in a local graveyard of others who did not survive the trip. Pequeña presses Pulga to move on after several weeks; he leaves with her but is broken in spirit.
Pequeña leads them from train to train until they arrive in the town of Altar, where dishonest men try to force them to pay for shelter and supplies. They seek refuge in a church where a nun administers first aid and a blessing before sending them to a local shelter. There, Pequeña arranges for a coyote, a migrant smuggler, to lead them across the desert to the border.
She pays for the coyote’s services with the engagement ring from Rey. Pulga, Pequeña, and a small group of other migrants follow the coyote for two nights; they rest in shade in the day. On the third night, Pulga gives up. Pequeña cannot convince him to walk with the group, and they are left behind.
Pequeña forces Pulga out into the desert where they fall unconscious due to dehydration. They wake and try to walk in the heat of the sun, but are discovered by border patrol agents. Pulga falls unconscious again but Pequeña flees. She believes she weathers the night and is rescued by Marta, Soledad’s sister, when she wanders close to a road the next day.
Pequeña speak with her mother by telephone. Pequeña’s mother then calls Pulga’s mother who arranges for his deceased father’s sister in the US to find him. Pulga is taken to a migrant detention center. He remains hopeless and traumatized until his father’s sister comes to take guardianship of him. Featured Collections
Is Mr. Nobody evil?
Nobody (Eric Morden) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He is the founder of the Brotherhood of Dada and an enemy of the Doom Patrol.
What is the symbolism of Mr. Nobody?
Mr. Nobody Mr. Nobody Analysis Logan Finney Do our choices matter? According to Nemo Nobody, our choices are what determine who we are. Our choices set our lives in a certain direction and ultimately lead us to our present selves. This idea draws from the butterfly effect.
One decision leads to another which then leads to another, and so on. This creates a struggle for humans to make difficult decisions. Nemo states, “We cannot go back. That is why is it hard to choose.” Once a decision is made, we must live with the consequences. What if we could “go back” and experience the consequences of every choice of a decision? According to Connie Rosati, one of the philosophers examined in our course, immortality could be a way that allows humans to make every decision with every outcome, and is one of the reasons why immortality is so appealing to human beings.
If we had unlimited time to make every choice however we wanted, we would no longer experience the regret that we sometimes feel after making a decision. In Mr. Nobody, one of the biggest decisions for Nemo comes when his parents get a divorce. He is faced with the impossible choice of whether to stay with his dad or go with his mom.
At this point in the movie, Nemo’s life splits off into different “realities.” One reality where he stays with his father, and one where he boards the train and leaves with his mother. Nemo lives out both of these lives where he experiences different things. Some things only being experienced depending on which parent he chose to live with.
It appears that Nemo has different levels of happiness in each reality, but as it seems, no one reality has more meaning than the other. In one of Nemo’s realities, he decides at age 15 how he wants his life to turn out. He tells himself that he will leave nothing to chance and not stop until his desires are met.
- However, once Nemo achieves his goals, he finds himself bored.
- He feels that he knows himself too well and that nothing is exciting anymore, as if nothing has meaning anymore.
- One philosopher named Thomas Nagel calls this feeling “the absurd.” The absurd is when one takes things very seriously, but in reality knowing that nothing really matters.
Nemo took his life so seriously that he followed the plan he had set for himself at age 15. Once reaching age 34 though, Nemo realises that the life he has built for himself is not truly what he wants or what is important to him. Longing for excitement, Nemo begins to base his decisions on a coin toss.
He brings back the factor of chance into his decisions. This action is a decision in itself. Nemo is deciding to incorporate chance in his decisions. This coin toss method ultimately results in Nemo’s death, but stands to prove the point that our choices lead to irreversible consequences. Near the end of the movie, it is revealed that each of the lives that Nemo had lived were all in fact made up.
He had imagined these lives at age 9 when trying to determine whether to live with his mother or his father. We, as viewers, get to see his different lives with different levels of happiness and different lifestyles, and make our own decision about which life we think is the best one.
The truth remains though, that each life is just as good and meaningful as the next The quote, “Every path is the right path. Everything could have been anything else and it would have just as much meaning” sums up the movie perfectly. No one life was better, or more meaningful than the others, they were simply different.
The conclusion to be made about this idea is that ultimately our decisions are not necessarily connected to meaning. Be free with your decisions in knowing that you can still live a meaningful life with however you make your choices. How Choice Creates the Need for Meaning Micah Phillips-Gary Mr.
Nobody is a film, first and foremost, about the nature of choice. Although this might seem tangentially related to meaning, autonomy is central to what is or isn’t meaningful to many philosophers. I personally believe, and will argue in this short essay, that choice, or the belief in choice, creates our need for meaning.
A central theme of Mr. Nobody is that once someone makes a choice s/he restricts reality to simply the version of events where s/he made that particular choice. Until one makes a choice anything is possible. This is based on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which an infinite number of parallel universes exist, one in which each possible choice is made.
Making a choice determines which of those possible universes is the one you live in. Combined with the idea of the butterfly effect, that a small change can have enormous consequences, this makes every choice seem almost monumentally significant and difficult to decide. The film demonstrates this, whether Nemo chooses to live with his father or his mother has a huge impact on his life, but so does whether he’s a few seconds earlier or later to meet a woman he likes.
To the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, this whole situation is absurd because in reality what choice we make is determined by arbitrary cultural factors. I am inclined to agree with him on a practical basis. I am impacted by my environment before I can consciously make choices, these lead to the development of my personality and ideas, and my personality and ideas are me, so even if I’m making a free choice “I” am created by arbitrary cultural factors.
However, I still feel as if I’m making choices and that these are important. I also agree with Nagel that these two perspectives combined make my life absurd. However, I also believe that the belief that my choices are significant can explain something more fundamental, something that is often simply chalked up to human nature; the need to have a meaningful life in the first place.
Before we make a choice, anything is possible, but we have to make a choice because not choosing is still a choice. Additionally, as dark as it may sound, we always have the choice to commit suicide. Excluding some instinctual, basic desires, such as the desire to stay alive, we have very little to base these choices on.
- We can consider the factual consequences of our choices, what actually might happen, as young Nemo does when deciding whether to live with his father or his mother.
- But, as the film shows, there can be so many possible consequences that it is overwhelming.
- More importantly, though, we still need to make value judgements about the consequences as we did for the original choices, so this doesn’t solve the problem.
This is essentially my idea, that we need some kind of value judgement to decide which choice to make, we need some kind of purpose or meaning to tell us which of these choices to make, as even a small choice could determine the fate of the universe through the butterfly effect.
The film seems to explicitly bring up the idea that choice creates the need for meaning and gives in answer that “Every path is the right path. Everything could’ve been anything else and it would have had just as much meaning.” This is similar to the view of philosopher Richard Taylor, who believes that meaning is totally subjective.
While this can be seen as uplifting, it’s also interesting to note that it also allows absurdity to still exist with true, free choice. Rather than our expectation being that we have choices that are immensely important and the reality being that we don’t have choice, our expectation is now that our choices are immensely important when in reality whichever choice we make is arbitrary.
- Philosophy in Mr.
- Nobody Sheng Tian We can see from the movie, Nemo hesitated to make a lot of choices: father or mother, Anna or Elise or Jean, rich man or poor man, desperate life or boring life.
- Instead of making choices by himself, a lot of times, he just flipped a coin and chose one of the sides.
If some unexpected things out of his control happen, he has the power to delete this path and chooses alternatives instead. However, he said confusing words before he died: “each path is equally valuable as other alternatives.” He leaves us with a big question here: “does choice make no difference to our lives, or is anything wrong for us to measure the internal “things” in each choice?” In order to answer the above question, the first priority is to answer what is the meaningful life.
Nemo puts a lot of effort into seeking a meaningful life with many different choices. In other words, if we could find the meaningfulness of life, the choices would be easy to make as there is an anchor for us to make a comparison that otherwise we could not. However, the answer we are going to find is much more difficult compared to any questions above.
If one would be able to answer the question, he would at least meet a demanding requirement that he has the entire experiences of anything and then evaluate them by making reasonable and rational comparisons, and finally gain the answer. This whole process is similar to Nemo because Nemo had the talent to predict anything that could be possible in the near future after he made a choice.
The first experienced candidate would be the universe. After the expansion of the universe, lives were created. If meaningfulness were ever created, it would be created only after the universe. However, according to Camus’s view the universe cannot tell us the answer because the universe is silent or its language is far beyond our understanding at least for now.
So, the universe could not give us any clues. The next candidate would be God as it is a symbol of omnipotence. Nevertheless, this would also be problematic simply because meaningfulness should not be exclusive as the people who don’t believe in god also have the right to access to meaningful lives.
As this logics goes further, we would find that lives are meaningless. Whatever choices one make, whatever kind of life one leads, whatever initial environment one lives in, whatever kind of pleasure or suffering one had been though, would be pointless as nobody knows what meaningfulness is. According Wielenberg, this pessimistic conclusion fits the pointless existence argument he mentioned in his article.
The pointless existence mainly states that we need a supernatural being to determine what is good/meaningful. If we follow this logic, immortality would be the only plausible cure as we must live long enough to know the answer of what is meaningful. And death seems to be bad as it deprives the opportunity of living meaningfully.
Regardless of fact that whether we couldn’t live as immortal being, we can imagine that all of our desires would be completed one day because we have plenty time to decide what we are longing for, and to fulfill those things. However, soon we would find that our lives would become boring and the meaningfulness of lives just exists in a certain period of time, and it doesn’t correlate to the length of life.
Then, we can conclude that immortality cannot promise meaningfulness, and meaningfulness can happen even in a short period of time. This gives us a lot of hope as there is possibility that we could reach meaningfulness during our own lifetime. However, this thinking may highlight the importance of making the right choices because we only live in a limited time.
Back to the question: “does choice make no difference to our lives?” The answer would be no if we ignore the ending in the movie that each path is just meaningful as the others. If we assume that each choice would have ripple-effect to achieve the meaningfulness in the future, we would be better to consider all of the consequences the choices may lead just like Nemo did in the movie.
This process turned out undesired as the movie indicated. So, what may causes this dilemma? In a TED presentation called how to make hard choice, Ms. Ruth Chang stated that the hard choices we made in our daily lives are in a totally different world from the scientific one.
- In other words, most of the hard choices don’t only have three options including some better than others, some equal or worse than others.
- And the reason that these choice are hard to make is that they convey value inside of themselves.
- The value includes our love toward family, the responsibility, the moral standards and the things which cannot be measured by number, by equations in a scientific way.
Now, it may more or less make sense that Nemo thought life was meaningless initially because he always wanted to find the best alternatives, and to make the right choices to live a meaningful and desired life. So do we. This rational thinking would be an obstacle for us to gain meaningfulness as in order to make each choice rationally, we always seek the external reasons to support our choices.
Everything that we depend on would turn us into the slaves of reasons. For instance, Nemo chose Jean instead of Elise only because he wanted to make Elis jealous of him instead of whether he really loves Jean or not. Hence, we should follow our heart fully to make a choice, and we should depend on our internal feelings rather than the external reasons.
This is coincident to the ending of this movie: Nemo chooses his own path after he realized that neither of the original choices were what he really want, and all of hard choices he made, all of the paths he went through were just equally meaningful as each other with just different wonderful contents within.
- Meaningful lives often bring us a lot of fears as we are afraid that we are not smart enough to make a right choice each time.
- Moreover, we may regret some of the choices we made in the past.
- From my point of view, there is still one thing we should celebrate.
- Most choices we made are from our heart, and we have not fallen to the drifters in our lives.
That’s to say, meaningfulness remains somewhere in the future because we are just who we are, and we want to be whom we want to be.
- Scene Analysis :
- Micah Phillips-Gary
This clip succinctly explains how the fact that we make choices forces us to take our lives seriously. It also brings up how the idea of value judgements are introduced into our lives by the fact that we have to make choices as well. A lot of what the film goes on to show through its action is stated in this early scene.
- Logan Finney In this scene, the main character, Nemo, can be heard narrating over footage of irreversible actions.
- He then relates these actions to decisions by noting that once a decision has been made, the consequences of that decision are permanent.
- This idea explains why humans struggle to make difficult decisions.
We want to choose, as Nemo puts it, the “right” choice because once we make our choice we cannot go back, we cannot reverse the consequences. As the clip progresses, Nemo is seen trying to decide between two desserts, but he puts so much weight on picking the right dessert that he ultimately chooses not to choose.
- Scene Analysis :
- Sheng Tian
I chose this scene because Nemo points out the core idea that “each path is just right as much as others.” Moreover, from the journalist’s question we would know that he is rational but he just makes choices based on reasons which are used to justify why his choice would be the right.
And in the perfect ending where Nemo died with happiness, I think Nemo is also the mirror of himself who serves as one of possibilities in the imagination of the 9 year-old boy. Although this would not tell us how many plausible ways to really get meaningfulness in our lives, this gives us a hint that finally we will be satisfied with what we did when we were young overall even though there were times when we wanted to make a different choice and see what would happen.
: Mr. Nobody
What did Hutch do in nobody?
A docile family man slowly reveals his true character after his house gets burgled by two petty thieves, which, coincidentally, leads him into a bloody war with a Russian crime boss. Emmy winner Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, The Post, Nebraska) stars as Hutch Mansell, an underestimated and overlooked dad and husband, taking life’s indignities on the chin and never pushing back. A nobody. When two thieves break into his suburban home one night, Hutch declines to defend himself or his family, hoping to prevent serious violence. His teenage son, Blake (Gage Munroe, The Shack), is disappointed in him and his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen, Wonder Woman), seems to pull only further away. The aftermath of the incident strikes a match to Hutch’s long-simmering rage, triggering dormant instincts and propelling him on a brutal path that will surface dark secrets and lethal skills. In a barrage of fists, gunfire and squealing tires, Hutch must save his family from a dangerous adversary (famed Russian actor Aleksey Serebryakov, Amazon’s McMafia)-and ensure that he will never be underestimated as a nobody again. — Universal Pictures Trapped in a mundane existence, Hutch Mansell, a glum, humble, workaday suburban father, is petrified when violent burglars break into his home, threatening his wife and children. In the wake of this soul-scarring incident, one good deed and several broken bones-and teeth-later, suddenly, imperfect Hutch summons up the courage to stand up for himself, only to find himself targeted by the murderous Russian drug lord, Yulian Kuznetsov, and his brutal henchmen. It seems that Mansell has a death wish; however, in this world, there are two kinds of people: wolves and lambs. The question is, which one is Hutch? — Nick Riganas
Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) leads an ordinary life with a strained marriage to Becca (Connie Nielsen), two children Blake (Gage Munroe) & Abby (Paisley Cadorath) and an unremarkable office job. One night, some thieves break into his house with a gun. Hutch prepares to fight but relents and lets them leave. Blake had one of the thieves in his grip, and Hutch had the perfect opportunity to attack, but he didn’t. Instead, he asks Blake to let the thief go. Everyone sees Hutch as a failure, but Hutch reveals to his brother Harry that he held back because the burglars’ gun was unloaded. Hutch and Harry speak over the radio hidden in Hutch’s office. Eddie Williams (Michael Ironside) is Hutch’s father-in-law and his boss. Charlie (Billy MacLellan) is Eddie’s son and Hutch’s brother-in-law. He offers Hutch a gun for his own protection, which Hutch refuses. Hutch has given an offer to Eddie to buy out his business, but its not a great offer. It is revealed that Hutch used to work for the FBI. The following evening, Hutch’s daughter reveals that her bracelet is missing, and he sets out to find it. Hutch suspects the thieves from the previous night. He had seen the tattoo on one of thieves and finds the parlor where they got the tattoo. He finds their name and address. After tracking down the thieves, Hutch demands they return the bracelet, but he realizes they don’t have it and leaves after seeing their sick baby drove them to crime. A group of thugs get on a bus Hutch is taking, and he brutally beats them. Hutch returns home and is bandaged by Becca. Becca knows Hutch’s past. Unfortunately, one of his victims Teddy (Aleksandr Pal) is the brother of Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksei Serebryakov), a Russian crime lord safeguarding the mob’s Obshak (Common treasury money used to settle disputes) money, who sends a crew to Hutch’s home. Yulian was able to track Hutch via his metro card, which he dropped on the bus. Yulian bribes a pentagon official to find out Hutch’s past. He instructs his staff to bring in Hutch alive. Harry calls Hutch ahead and warns him that the men he attacked were connected to Yulian. He asks Hutch to check with The Barber (Colin Salmon), Hutch’s former Government handler. Hutch hides his family, kills the attackers, and reveals he is a former “auditor”-an assassin employed by intelligence agencies. While employed as an auditor Hutch set a target free, who reformed and lived happily with a new family. Wanting a similar life, Hutch retired. Hutch sends his family to safety and retrieves his hidden gold and cash, then finds the bracelet under the couch all along. He burns his house down to dispose of the dead assassins and steals his neighbors classic Dodge Challenger. Meanwhile, two assassins come to his father David’s (Christopher Lloyd) retirement home and are swiftly taken out by the old man. Hutch uses the gold to buy his father in-law’s metal fabrication factory and burns Yulian’s Obshak money. He then proceeds to booby trap the entire factory. Hutch then visits Yulian and makes an offer to Yulian to end the fighting. Hutch says that Yulian attacked his family, and he burned down the Obshak. Yulian wants out as well as he cannot finance the entire Obshak. So, Hutch offers him a retirement in one of the lesser-known Caribbean Islands, away from the Russian mafia and Hutch will get his own life back. But Yulian and his men pursue him to the factory and surround him. Suddenly his brother Harry (RZA) and father provide him with suppressing fire and the Russians are drawn into the factory. Using a variety of weapons and deadly traps that Hutch had prepared, Hutch kills them all. Harry and David survive the shootout, along with Hutch. Hutch is arrested but released with no charges filed thanks to a mysterious phone call. Three months later, while buying a new house with his wife, Hutch receives a call suggesting that his services are still required.