Life - a Cliche

Sometimes more than anything else I found the word itself quite interesting one. Offcourse word does not only mean syntagmatic form but also the connotation of it. Today, I am going to talk about the word “cliche”, maybe it is a beautiful word for many people. I don’t know why but it has a quite negative effect on me.

The word is hunting me for many days. Recently, I asked one of my closest friends, “What is your opinion about cliche?” His reaction was quite normal although I asked him suddenly out of the blue. He told me in which sense are you asking me? I said to him in general. Then he replied- what you are saying. it is itself a cliche. Somehow I convinced on his opinion. Dictionary defines it a stereotypical opinion or phrase but in a larger sense, we can see it in our thought process, system of governance and also in a bureaucracy. I think we all are the product of cliches because we hardly raise question over the existing thought process, culture and discourses. And we accept the beauty of the same stereotypical and overrated opinions and phrases, for example, boys are boys, brave as lion, every cloud has a silver lining, everything is fair in love and war so and so. However, the world can be more democratic and equal if we cross the so-called boundaries of cliches.

When I was totally into cliche, I found one beautiful quotation about it, “The problem with cliches is not that they contain false ideas, but  rather they are the superficial articulation of very good ones.”  And my take on cliche is not totally different than this. If we deny the depth of anything and we accept the superficial aspect of that particular thing than it is a cliche. We can see these kinds of cliches everywhere, dining hall to parliament, local market to shopping mall, wallpaper to newsroom. And I considered myself a cliched form of everything.

I am talking about cliche and I am forgetting the “Samuel Beckett”, it is not fair enough. When I think about it, obviously I remember him and his characters. The funniest thing is that when I think about his character I  take life as a cliche. Indeed life is a cliche, I tried to redefine it but I couldn't.  However, I always say it’s better to be unsung than to be a cliche.