reflections after Garden State

it wasn’t what i thought it would be. it was better than i expected. the moral of the story is the maxim i strive to live my life by, and because of that, the movie will hold a place in my heart, at least for a while.

the existential conundrum, when notions of what ‘should be’ confuse the experience of what is. the real world is not one of perpetual bliss, and to live with the pain of living and knowing is not always a problem that needs solving. i’m not sure that it ever is.

i think about all of the artists who were able to bring something beautiful into the world before taking their own lives. so long as they give us something, so long as they prove themselves, we forgive them for choosing to check out of this world. we may remark, ‘how tragic,’ but we don’t think them weak willed or ‘broken’ the way that we might consider the suicide of someone close to us who left us with no great work indicating their journey into the depths of the unfathomable abyss. without a material inscription, suicide is unforgivable.

too often we busy ourselves with doing because we’re terrified of being. so much so that we can live whole lifetimes completely unaware that our way of life had been predicated on fear all along. and we are broken, who are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of clarity, enough to inspire us to swan dive into the deepest, darkest waters that frighten us the most.

Sam, the heroic love interest in the movie, the compulsive liar, was blessed with a profound sincerity that was the catalyst for Andrew's redemption. her free-spirited silliness is part of what made her so beautiful, so essential, to his realization. she was a liar who didn’t shrink back from truth for even a second, and it became quickly apparent to me that he and everyone in his circle had a greater problem with honesty than she did. she was the liar, yet hers was the only way of being that was not contrived. so much so that she freed him enough to accept himself and his world as it was. (i'm sure that the vacation he took from his meds was helpful as well).

this is life, and sometimes it hurts like hell. but for whatever disparaging remarks we might make about life, it remains the only game in town. we each have a right to decide for ourselves the rules that we will play by, until the game is ended, either by ourselves or an outside force. that’s the simple truth of our existential condition, and that’s why this movie will hold a place in my heart.