[Here were feelings Combeferre could understand entirely too well. The last microwave incident had really done it for him, along with the knowledge he had better just quit engineering while he still had eyebrows left to use. It was not a matter of not wanting to embrace the future, but a matter of the future being...well. ]
It is not so satisfying here as it first seemed, is it? [Combeferre finally asked, when he found he had no easy answers for his friend, and instead crossed over from his chair to drape an arm around Jehan.] We've been told that there has been so much progress made, and yet, looking around us...all of the same evils still remain, the same ignorances put us, and others at risk...the same...
[Where did one draw the line between indicating comiseration and sounding out and out like they were complaining for themselves? It was difficult, extremely difficult, to find that place.]
I hate feeling stupid myself. I hate microwaves and plastic and everything to do with kitchens and engines and the constantly having to jog to feel as if I understand what a child here could. It sounds as though that is the same for you? It is the knowledge, really, that no matter how much I devote myself to something here, there is so much of it that I will simply never catch up to. Is that the way of it with you? Not so much...You hardly sound selfish and ungrateful. Simply homesick. I can understand the feeling for THAT as well as I understand anything. And well, so many unsettling things have happened or been brought about.
[Combeferre paused here. trying to find something better to say but still he could not find it.]
Enjolras told us that the twentieth century would be a happy one. And presumably those that followed it. I do not see happiness here, Jehan. I see that we've been very stupid, as a whole, humanity. That it's lead us to such awful things, and given us much that we do not know how to deal with that really... they do not make life much better do they? It take so long, as you say, to reason things out , and to understand our places, if we even have them... I see why you don't like it here. I don't think I do myself. Too much is...not just foreign. It is wrong.
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It is not so satisfying here as it first seemed, is it? [Combeferre finally asked, when he found he had no easy answers for his friend, and instead crossed over from his chair to drape an arm around Jehan.] We've been told that there has been so much progress made, and yet, looking around us...all of the same evils still remain, the same ignorances put us, and others at risk...the same...
[Where did one draw the line between indicating comiseration and sounding out and out like they were complaining for themselves? It was difficult, extremely difficult, to find that place.]
I hate feeling stupid myself. I hate microwaves and plastic and everything to do with kitchens and engines and the constantly having to jog to feel as if I understand what a child here could. It sounds as though that is the same for you? It is the knowledge, really, that no matter how much I devote myself to something here, there is so much of it that I will simply never catch up to. Is that the way of it with you? Not so much...You hardly sound selfish and ungrateful. Simply homesick. I can understand the feeling for THAT as well as I understand anything. And well, so many unsettling things have happened or been brought about.
[Combeferre paused here. trying to find something better to say but still he could not find it.]
Enjolras told us that the twentieth century would be a happy one. And presumably those that followed it. I do not see happiness here, Jehan. I see that we've been very stupid, as a whole, humanity. That it's lead us to such awful things, and given us much that we do not know how to deal with that really... they do not make life much better do they? It take so long, as you say, to reason things out , and to understand our places, if we even have them... I see why you don't like it here. I don't think I do myself. Too much is...not just foreign. It is wrong.