Lessons From Adrian Mole

Sitting cross-legged on my bed, typing an entry into my laptop, sipping on a wonderfully scalding mug of jasmine tea, I feel like Carrie Bradshaw - sans the bizzare (but occasionally to-die-for) clothes, the Manolos and the interesting lovers. Laughs. For some obscure reason, it feels .. cool. Eh heh. I suppose being able to identify with someone so famous makes you feel less alone in this big bad world, that you're not the only one with wonky problems. But then again, that's exactly why Sex and the City is so popular with women - we all (or almost all) identify with the ladies; we're all a little bit of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, and we all wish we had a Mr Big in our lives.

I've just finished reading the Adrian Mole Diaries by Sue Townsend, the last one being Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was a good read. Adrian starts off as an unhappy, horribly naive thirteen-and-three-quarters-year-old with a superiority complex who grows up to be an unhappy, horribly naive adult with a superiority complex, only with real, adult problems, ie. credit card debts, wages, housing mortgage, women, illegitimate children, etc. Adrian goes through his whole life believing himself intellectually and morally superior to mostly everyone else, with very few exceptions.

It's amusing to see how Adrian handles what life throws his way, and especially how he handles other people's opinions of him - which is that of a dorkish, gawky, socially awkward boy who never grew up.

I found myself being drawn into Adrian's character, mostly because it's written in the first person (they are his diaries, after all) and Sue Townsend just has a gift with words. It shocked me just as much as it shocked Adrian to discover what people thought of me - I mean, him. Of course.

And it made me wonder - is what we think we are, truly who we are? Of course, we say other people's opinions of us don't matter ultimately, but yet .. maybe we're the ones deluding ourselves.

Take Adrian, for example. He believes himself to be a humanitarian, a generous, caring and responsible member of society, a writer-savant, a misunderstood intellectual, a man of incredible wit. His friends, however, (if you could call them that) think he's a general all-around loser, a socially-bumbling idiot, frequently insensitive, delusional about his so-called-literary skills, and, to quote his father, a "tight-fisted git who always has his well-groomed head stuck in a book". Laughs.

But seriously, I wonder how many of us are like that, if not all of us?

How many of us believe we are better than what we really are?

Or is what we think we are, really what we are?

Barring those who pretend to be something they're not, most of us try to be true to our characters. We say what we really mean, act the way we really feel, and take pride in our successes and achievements, because we've earned them. But let's be honest here: how many of us really acknowledge our shortcomings, our faults, and our failures?

And that is the problem with Adrian Mole. He didn't think he had any. Well, not many, anyway, and they weren't major.

A penny for your thoughts.

However, in the last book (apparently the last book, ever), Adrian finally does grow up. Riddled with debt, desolation and romantic drama, he finally stops seeing the world through the naive eyes of a child (at the age of thirty-four-and-three-quarters), and truly comes to terms with his relative insignificance and mortality.

I read the epilogue with mixed feelings. I was glad that Adrian finally grew up, and that he now seems happy as a result of it; but I was also sad. See, to grow up, Adrian had to first lose all his illusions. Everything came crashing down on him all at once, and that was when his disillusionment occured.

And I find it sad that you have to be disillusioned to survive as an adult, that you have to be disillusioned to be realistic. How much nicer the world was behind child-tinted glasses, when the only real mean thing in this world were the adults.

Illusions are nice. Dreams are nice, but maybe they belong to another time, when the world is actually a much better place.