"Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners — your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards — who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute. Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city."
Malachi Stack
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder
It's a farce, supposedly, a comedy designed to make you laugh. And you laugh, uproariously. But you also think for a minute. And what you think about isn't ethereal or abstract. Basically - how do you enjoy life? And what is with puritanical obsessions with morality and living correctly? Vices shouldn't be harmful, and they shouldn't be mean. But somewhere, throughout the course of history, enjoying one's self became a sin. Which, if you think about it, is completely ridiculous. We're here, we don't know why - we don't really know how we started or who pushed the button or how. But there are so many things to enjoy...
Bad decisions are good for you in small doses. Eating McDonald's french fries dipped in a chocolate shake. Getting a little drunk and dancing with someone you don't know. Reading trashy romance novels. Showing a little leg. Staying up entirely too late to watch a movie (that may or may not have Joshua Jackson in it...)
Make bad decisions every once in awhile. They cure existential crises and they make for good stories. And life should be about the pursuit of good stories.
And while you're at it:
"The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous...and the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight. And they can both shatter the world."
Dolly Gallagher Levi
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder
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