The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

I was watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty earlier today and at first, I thought it was just some ridiculous movie about a socially dysfunctional guy and his life and it was kind of sad actually. Pretty depressing even. It just had their aura of despondence and hopelessness like he was stuck in a rut and couldn't get out and all he had were his imaginations which was borderline an OCD.

But then I continued watching it somehow and I got it. I finally got it. It started making more sense and the message was clear at the end of the movie. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a beautiful movie with a beautiful message.

It's about life, and the magic and beauty of experience. It is about experiences and how it shapes us as people, and how taking that step into the unknown, into taking adventures makes you grow as a person and into a full fledged PERSON. When it started out, Walter Mitty was a gray husk of a person. He hadn't been anywhere, he hadn't done anything of note and he had mad skills on a skateboard but he hadn't done anything about his skills either. Judging by his character it was probably a lack of confidence resulting in a lack of motivation coupled with a sense of pointlessness as he trudges on the hamster wheel of work every day. But when he finally took that large step into the unknown in search of Sean O'Connell and boarded that flight to Greenland, it wasn't apparent at first but little by little he changed. He wasn't that small hopeless man anymore who didn't have a voice and who didn't matter. He was a man. He was a man who finally found the courage to say what he needed to say and what he wanted to say. Towards the end of the movie he was more bedraggled, but neither was he gray anymore. Not by a long shot. It was like his whole aura shifted and he became a different person. It's not what is outside that makes a man, it's what is inside. And that movie teaches us that. It is about the magic of experience and the beauty of living and feeling and doing not just the everday things but the interesting things, the passionate driven things and the exhilarating things whatever they may be for us which in turn makes us grow into the people we were meant to be. Full of life and colour, character and personality. Walter Mitty grew through his adventures, he became a new man; he became a man. He wasn't stuck in his shell anymore, he'd outgrown it and he'd burst through it like a butterfly from a cocoon. There wasn't hopelessness anymore, there was opportunity. And that movie portrays that message with a quiet subtlety just like the way Sean O'Connell delivers his dialogue. Quietly, serenely, but hard-hitting.

Beautiful things don't ask for attention - Sean O' Connell.

Why Did I Have to Fall in Love?

It has been a thought that occurred to me for some time now in the midst of my emotional torment that is once again and always unrequited love. I don't know what is it about me that I always seem to care for someone who could never feel the same way for me. It has been a while since I have felt a "crush" and I have little doubt that it is possible that what I feel now, is love. I wonder if our feelings and the intensity of them thereof matures as we do. Where once I was a girl and was having crushes on people, now I fall in love. Unfortunate of course when that love happens to be unrequited but love nevertheless. 

I do not understand why and what I feel towards him. Only that it is truly inexplicable. He treats me with such little grace that one would be off put by the idea of falling in love with someone such as that. He is throughly, a bad idea less the fact that he does not love me back. And it is torment. Parts of me wish that he could while other parts of me feel a despair that he never could and they chase each other around in my head every day. Every smile he graces me with turns my hope around and only to send it dashing back to the ground. Every kind word sends me soaring but then every time it comes back to the same old spot same old story and rain starts pouring again. The truth is, I am not what he wants and I can never be. It hurts me to the core to think about everything that churns my mind around when thoughts of him come unbidden. It feels like a wrench is thrown into the workings of my heart and lodges there, refusing to set me free. But I love him. And I have never dared to say it to anyone, to admit it to anyone and I doubt I ever will. I have hidden that truth about what happened from everyone because I couldn't bear the recounting of that story. It always brings a hollow thud to my heart. Why did I have to fall in love? 

Ode to My Joy.

I've come a long way since my childhood. I've lost my way, found it again, and lost it again only to find out that maybe I didn't know my way after all. The world isn't as black and white as I thought it to be. And eventhough I did not realize it then, I thought I was so black and white also. But it's not and I'm not. And I'm sure the world has plenty of lessons in store. Plenty or revelations in store. Most of which I cannot even dream of knowing before the time comes. 

I used to think nothing of my way if life. Maybe I was always alone, but it didn't bother me. It didn't provoke thought as much back then as it unfortunately does now. Suddenly the question of being alone, weighs so heavy on my mind. Perhaps it was the revelation that another human's company is something to be yearned for after all. Perhaps it's the realisation that the world and it's peoples, well, people are not always going to be simple. They're not always going to make it easy. In fact they'll mostly make it goddamned difficult. People will hurt you. And break your heart. And maybe I've learned to see further than that naive dream of possibilities, I've opened my eyes to the bigger and natural picture, one not seen through the glasses of my girlish hopefulness. But whatever it is, people, and the endless comings and goings, the passings by of them in our lives has awoken in me the need to not feel lonely. The fear of being lonely. And the fact that I am lonely. I've always been lonely. I'm just starting to realise that fact now. 

The fear if loneliness is a human condition, especially when one lives in a soulless environment like we do. People come and go and we all go about our business like there's no inter connectivity between us all. Like we are all individual links in a chain that isn't connected, just floating around in actuality. But we are all connected. We are links in a chain, we're meant to connect and form that bond. So why is it so hard? 

I've come to fear my loneliness, particularly the fact that it may last. I know the future's not for us to see, but I would be lying if I said I didn't feel those pangs of fear every once in a while, much as I hate to admit that fact. 

As the days and then the years march on, and the endless procession of people come and go; the stories, the successes and the passions, the mistakes and the dramas. The stories. They seem to flick before like an endless reel of film, a thought provoking one. And just as how every man and for the purposes of feminism, woman sees their world through lenses of their own making, I see that movie through the lenses of my own making. My mind and my interpretation picks out the threads of relationships between all of them, the connectivity and the link in the stories; between people. 

I have begged the Divine for a sign lately, to let me know I'm not making the mistakes I shouldn't be making. That I'm not making the mistakes at all. That maybe I should be doing the right thing but what is the right thing? Because I no longer know. All I know is that I fear the loneliness. I fear that may never find someone that I can and will connect with on that level that I find so dear and necessary to me. And I fear it so much that I have begun to start thinking that maybe I need to accept the fact that maybe I just may never find it and I should be ok with it. Maybe. Just to keep my sanity intact. 

I do not enjoy being the Donna to someone's Harvey, nor the Regina or the Miranda in someone else's story. But it seems that that is all that I am. I am the Donna, and the Regina and the Miranda. And the one thing these characters have spoken to me about is that they are in conflict, and or in denial and or they endure. Always enduring. Something I never thought I had to do. Something I never thought I would allow myself to do but I now in fact perhaps, do. We are stupid by design, women, men, all of us. This crucial flaw in us. Is it perhaps really what makes this universe go round? 

I do not want to endure. I want to sing of my own triumphs, to live out my own story where I am not just a spectator on the sidelines; a necessary element but never the one who wears the crown. I want to sing of my own triumphs in my own story, and where I once thought I was living my own story, I seem to feel now that I may have been a tad knocked off course. 

Donna told Louis in an episode that jealousy, it brings out the worst in people. And that is true. And I know that. Envy is a poison, but it seeps through your veins and overtakes all that is good inside you until you feel like you have no choice. It takes strength and a lot of enduring to resist such poison such as envy. And I know that personally. I feel it to the core. Because envy, and jealousy, it will bite you from the inside. Every single pang is like being bitten inside, right on the heart and it will slowly bleed. And it will cry tears on the inside, even when your eyes are dry and your lips still smile because green is not an attractive colour on anyone. 

I know how hard it is, to tell yourself that it's not you. It's just not right. To tell yourself that you understand why it had to be someone else and not you. To tell yourself that you are talking about this now when even thinking about it brings back unpleasant emotions. I know how hard it is to see the object of your jealousy and not hate it; to feel like it is not their fault even when you know in your mind that it is truly not. Your heart just won't let it go. I know those bleeding tears, when they cry those bitter bitter tears but I shall not dwell on it. For even now, this is too much. 

I've never understood the purpose of such a test. To prove me wrong perhaps? That all the things I said I'd never do. I'm just human after all. And when you do realise that, that's when you realise all the stupid stupid things you swore you'd never do, filling the agenda of your daily life. Some things will never make sense to the mind, that makes perfect irrevocable sense to the heart. And maybe now I embrace my humanity. For although I may do the same stupid things I scorned for love, I am doing those same stupid things for love. 

Your Place in the World.

There is something to be said for being so secure in your own identity that you don't care what others may think about you, none of it matters. To be so secure about your own place in this world that validation is a thing of the past and no longer necessary. I am tired. Tired, of being so conscious about what I'm doing "right" and what I'm doing "wrong". Of being please when I do get something "right" and not so pleased when I don't. I am tired of wanting to be something and or someone that someone can be proud of and grateful to have. Someone that someone would want. Someone special in the eyes of that special someone. And failing to do so and become so time and time again. It leaves you feeling empty and drained. Because no matter how hard you try you cannot be that someone. I cannot be that someone if I'm not already it in the first place. I'm tired of trying to be someone he would want, tired of trying so hard to prove that I am and or can be that someone he would want. And though it is disheartening, and saddening that he would want something else, it is just something I have to come to terms with. Because there is no other way around it. It hurts me whenever it is brought it my attention, every little pang with every little reminder that I will never be that someone he wants. And it hurts. It chips away at my self esteem. It makes me question deep down inside me what is it that is not good enough about me, why am I not good enough even though I know full well in my mind that it is not about a question of good enough, it is and has always been a question about different and nothing to do with merit whatsoever. But somehow my heart just can't feel it and my soul doesn't seem to believe it. 

I am tired of trying to be something that I am not. And failing at that. He was right. Of course I always knew he's right. The important thing is being secure and comfortable within yourself and after that, nothing else matters.

Waiting on the Impossible

"Waiting?... Well now THIS is unusual. Quite unexpected," Mademoiselle mused aloud, her right hand stroking her chin as she leaned forward and furrowed her brows. "What do you think?" She looked at me. 

"Nothing surprises me anymore. Frankly after the year we've had, nothing surprises me anymore," I threw my hands up in abandon. 

And it is true. The last year had been an eye opening roller coaster ride of a year. We had laughed and cried, actually mostly cried and things, trust and faith, beliefs have been broken down and rebuilt tentatively and shorn down and stacked up again in a repeated cycle, leaving almost no room for recovery or complete and proper introspection. Not that proper introspection might make much sense of the mess it's left behind in it's wake. We have all grown up, we have matured. Saddened and beaten perhaps but grown somehow and we can only hope it would be for the better. Only the young and foolish make rash judgements and concede to their passions in their convictions. And perhaps we may be not so young anymore, at least in our minds and our hearts. 

"I know we never put any stock in it before. I don't know why either," Missy said with slight bewilderment. 

"Too much has changed," I sighed. "That's the way it is now apparently." I looked at Mademoiselle to gauge her reaction. There was a time when she would have exploded in Missy's face for her stupidity and hopelessness. Pining was not for Mademoiselle. 

But she just gazed expressionlessly at Missy, her right hand still cupping her chin as she sat with her leg crossed one over the other. A thin wispy tendril curling up from the stick in her left hand. Still the same but different. There was no snide remark or derisive expression. No scorn no discerning frown nor vitriol. Just an even expression. She understood now. Or has learned to reconcile the fact that there are two elements to a person and accept the other half of being human. Hurt and feelings. She regarded Missy with less contempt now. And more reserved understanding. 

Missy was sobbing less now. She would use to blubber away into her tissues, heartbroken and shattered from whatever issue was at hand. And of course she would already have, crying is normal and healthy. Perfectly understandable. But she was not doing it now. An air of sadness and despair permeated from her, those dark brown eyes dull from the absence of cheer, sad and downcast. A heavy weariness emanated from her but she had changed a lot as well. And waiting, was a big decision for her. Something completely unexpected and perhaps stands as true testament to just how much she had changed. 

The King of Cups

He's here to teach me all the bitter lessons in life. 

A Story.

I sat on the train today next to a man in uniform. Those suited to firemen or rescue workers. Bright neon yellow with reflective strips. He was by no means refined or genteel in any specific way. He was travelling from Newcastle to York and as I sat beside him the sour smell of his cheese crackers wafted over as he ate them. Unrushed, unhurried, but not particularly slowly either. It occurred to me then, like an awakening of some sort. I not only saw him and acknowledged his presence beside me, I SAW him and I could very potently feel the presence of another living, breathing human being beside me. The coincidence of the conscious and the subconscious, the careless and the meticulous, all in one. I truly appreciated this human next to me. And I thought then. Perhaps he is going home to his family. Perhaps he is taking this train back to those who care for him and patiently await his return. And I realized. Everyone has a story. Be it a good or a bad story, everyone has a story. And we may want to know them, we may not want to know those stories, but each individual has one and thus is how we connect and make sense of this world.