One of the hardest things in life is recognizing that although we build up our lives around certain ideals and follow a path that we create for ourselves, at the end of the day, we’re alone. We can fill our lives with people, activities, work, pleasure, etc. all we want to, but they are not going to fill the void. They might cover it up the and help us not feel so alone, but we are still fundamentally lonely by nature. This is something that is hard to come to terms with and learn how to cope with rather than let it destroy us, and I imagine people spend a lifetime trying to reconcile it. But we must find a way to make ourselves happy, or at least content.
Monthly Archives: January 2014
When yes actually means no
0Do you ever catch yourself saying yes when you actually mean to say no but you simply cannot bring yourself to say no? This could happen for a variety of reasons – maybe we don’t want to admit the truth, maybe we don’t really know what we want or how we feel and it is easier to say yes, maybe we so badly want to mean yes and we think that if we say yes enough it will translate into how we feel. Whatever the case may be, it is a very uncomfortable way to feel and there is no easy way out of it. You hope that perhaps throughout time you will feel differently and you wait for it to change, but when it doesn’t, it can be ever so frustrating. Sometimes you do feel differently and it does change and it feels great. But until then, you’re in limbo, which is always a very uneasy place to be.
Decisions, Decisions
0Sometimes making decisions is so difficult, it’s easiest to stop thinking about it and let the decision make itself. Sometimes we must pull ourselves away from the situation and let it work itself out. And sometimes decisions are made by circumstances that are beyond our control. These instances, although perhaps disappointing, are easier because they don’t require us to make any sort of decision, but only think about the repercussions either in sadness or in joy.
What we can’t do in life, we live through the movies
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What we can’t do in life, we live through the movies. This is what came to mind as I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Watching Walter Mitty go on his adventures was inspiring, but also unrealistic. We would all love to undergo a drastic change in our lives by going on adventures of that magnitude, but unfortunately there are a myriad of reasons why we can’t – work, money, family, responsibilities, time, and fear to name a few. But this is what the movies are for and what makes them so remarkable. Even if we can’t do something in our own life, we can watch it on screen and in a small way experience it ourselves. Having adventures like going to Greenland and hopping on a helicopter only to land in the ocean before being rescued onto a boat, or going to Iceland and experiencing a volcano eruption, or going to the Himalayan mountains to witness the sighting of a snow leopard are made possible by the movies, even if only in our imagination. And this is why I love the movies.
Walter Mitty’s transformation throughout the film stood out to me as the focal point and it was apparent in everything from his clothes to his personality to his interactions with those around him, including the woman he was trying to impress by his adventures. The soundtrack, which included David Bowie, Arcade Fire, Of Monsters and Men, and Rogue Wave really made the film. It added so much feel-good sentiment that I don’t know if the adventures would have been quite as exciting and inspiring without the soundtrack or had there been different song choices. It was just perfect. It was definitely fun to watch, although a bit confusing at times because of Walter’s zoned out tendencies, which sometimes made it hard to decipher what was actually happening and what was just in his imagination. It did, however, become more clear after his first couple of zoned out episodes. Ben Stiller, as the main actor and producer of the film, did a great job, and Sean Penn’s small role added just enough oomph. I would say the moral of the film is to embrace the person you would like to be and just go for it. Also, to go on adventures.
“To sustain ardor, one must be in love not only with the thing itself, but also with the idea of the thing itself.”
0“Moral: To sustain ardor, one must be in love not only with the thing itself, but also with the idea of the thing itself.”
I recently read this quote by Stephen Dankner in a newspaper article in The Advocate, which is based in New England, and I read it at just the perfect moment as I am trying to decide what I want to do with my future; more precisely, what I want to pursue graduate studies in and this quote sums it all up. So what do I love in essence and in thought? At the moment I am trying to make up my mind between Art History and Film. Submitting applications for both is a bit confusing and it’s hard to imagine which I would enjoy more. But reading this quote brought up a very basic, fundamental notion that I hadn’t thought of but makes all the sense in the world. Do most people have the luxury of loving what they do as well as the idea of it? Probably not. I think it’s a hard to achieve because it’s hard to even figure out what you love in essence AND in thought.
2013 in review
0The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 530 times in 2013. If it were a cable car, it would take about 9 trips to carry that many people.
gooollysandra 