The Greatest Novel - the Great Gatsby by F. Scott. Fitzgerald

When we fall in love it is the greatest thing in the world. We laugh, we smile, and our heart thumps in our chest so loudly we wonder if it will deafen the band. We feel on top of the world, and we are the happiest we have ever been. But the true question is: Are we truly in love with that person as they truly are, an ideal of that person, or merely what we have created in our own minds as to who that person truly is. This question must be answered on all levels of a relationship, but often no matter what happens, we seem to be in love with the ideal. We fall in love with the person we want them to be. We set out changing them, and then we set out trying to impress them with everything we think they'll love. In the end, you merely have that snapshot of imagination you created in your mind. So what is the answer to life if this is what we do naturally as humans?

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. It was staged during the pre - depression era in Long Island, New York. The great war (WWI) just ended, and the people of the time were waking up to a very bloody, very different reality. Nick comes back from the war and gets into the bond business to make some money. He leaves his Midwest family fortune and goes east to start a new life. He ends up renting a house right next to the richest man in New York who only wants to impress the young lady across from Long Island Sound. The man is named Jay Gatzby, a self made millionaire with enough rumors of who he is to fill an encyclopedia. Every Thursday, Friday, Sat, And Sun he throws lavishly 1000 people parties that last through the night and usually continue till Monday morning. Gatzby is doing this to just catch the eye of Nick's cousin Daisy, but she is married to an Old rich Rockefeller type named Tom Buchanan. In the end, Jay does get his girl but finds she is obsessed with money, greed, and selfishness; and the only love she has is for those things and only those things. Tom keeps her wrapped in her materialism and selfishness, and the old rich once again triumph over the new and up and coming. Jay Gatsby, whose real name is James Gatz - a young soldier from the Midwest looking for a dream and finding only a bullet with his name on it, from a misguided morning husband. He was not at fault, Daisy, the woman flying off to Europe with Tom was the real killer and accomplice at the same time.

So this novel sits as a warning for all people chasing the dream of a veiled reality. Stop and look, the reality is right here and now. We are left with this parting thought:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter '" to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning '"'"

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

If we base our reality, our present, our future on what has happened in our past we will only live in the past for eternity. Turn the page, set a goal, and walk on,. The things that are the past, and the people who were in the past were those people only once, and unless you did something or made that one point at that one instant of time, you will never be able to do it again. But the time has gone...get over it and learn that all you have is this moment to do everything in. Cease this moment and live in this moment, for we are only living now!