1 of my whimsical thoughts.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
♥ Saturday, July 21, 2007
Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook.To save me the time reading, i took the shortcut and watched the movie instead. Prior to this, the only other time i was acquainted with Nicholas Sparks' works was when i read The Wedding.I think as much as i can bludgeon this author to death with my criticism and hollering, i realise that there is a necessity for people like him and chick-lit authors to exist. I think in a world gone grey, they're the ones continually painting a surrealistic portrait of romance.And why is it necessary? Because fairy tales, like dreams, like fantasies are the nuances of human imagination that keeps one alive. When Harry Potter weaves his new magic, when the Beast turns out to be Prince Charming on breaking some evil spell, when Allie realises that she has been the protagonist of the love story her beau's been reading to her, We, the spectator are moved. We, the spectators, are moved out of the ordinary and banal. We are moved into the infinitely mystical and ambiguos, into the realm of possibilities and alternate realities. And it seems like motion is imperative to life. Oscar Wilde insinuated that Eve's departure from Eden as a simple rebel against boredom. (again, if my memory served me right)We hear the adage " the only thing constant is change". The movements of Man started at conception. When you were young, you hear stories of what happened in the past, you hear folktales to oblige you into humble submission of rituals and traditions, you hear fantasies that come alive on movies and novels..and all the time you're never present. What you are in is that constant, irreversible flux of life, that onslaught of information and imagination, of provided and controlled thought. Sounds eerily like a scene from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, or Orwell's 1984. And all of a sudden, you realise that you too are a story.The 5th Gospel, if my memory serves me right. But what if one is no longer interested in his or her story? What if like my friend, he figures that he wants to change so many parts of his story to alter his present? Do we get a clean sheet? Do we get a new point of conception? Is there a closing of the old testament, and a beginning of the new?There is a constant tension between life's grip on us and our grip on life. Do we set the terms of our own joy? Or do we let nature run its course and dictate to us our moments of ecstasy? I think about it..and i come to no other conclusion and no other answer, than Faith. Its faith that lies on the boundaries of our imagination; its faith that keep those stories and fantasies we hear about real, its simply faith that urges our stories to take new directions and get new leases on life. You want something more down to earth, more a daily life event? More realistic and less arty? How about this. The Economist reported that despite the 660 million dollars in compensation for the reported sexual abuses by priests in L.A, the largest sum ever to be paid by a church body, there was a near negligible drop in the persons baptised or attending church in the years that followed. The horrendous atrocities that must leave one shocked and shaken, apparently isnt able to move this very 'up in this air'. abstruse notion of man's faith! That man's mistakes, however heinous they are, wont be able to stain Belief. 'Happily ever after', if it is synonymous with the biblical "eternal heavenly rewards', is given meaning only by looking through the lenses of faith. That which you do not see, nor hear, but believe... In one of the more profound moments in this movie, The Polar Express, Tom Hanks remarked ", sometimes the things that are most real...are those that you cant see." And so...perhaps the thought that transpired out of this entire prose, this pathetic excuse of a theological thesis, is the profundity of the message of faith. From Nicholas Sparks, to Walt Disney, to the Pope, to some chinese mystic living beside a river in some monastry at the edge of some huge mountain, the one common thread the moves through all, that prompts such works of occasional fascination, that grips the minds of young and old, is the simple need to believe.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
♥ Saturday, July 07, 2007
"When Man looks around, he sees not people but humanity as a whole. He sees history as a succession of moments to the point of his conception. And at that point, he begins to shape history, he begins to understand that he can effect change, he is a part of a harbinger of hope.
This happens only when he has understood his individuality is not by sheer coincidence but a pre meditation, an emblem of perfection. Humanity as a whole slants towards an eternal solidarity; a cry for perfection; a call for justice. If man can see himself as part of an eternity, he can understand the gravity of his existence as a means for such ideals to prevail.
Yet, Man must confront his potential, to expand his horizons and unleash his creativity. Only then is he fully alive. He understands that for another to be a brother, he must know when unique ends and comparison begins. And that whilst all are different, all are similar- we're under the same sky, having the same hope of a brighter tomorrow, and wondering at the same chaos that mystifies.
Its on this line of thought, that respect, compassion, sincerity and forgiveness is built. That through a common humanity, through the thread of a similar hope, and through the same river of tears, will we come to see our neighbour, where boundaries of regions and race, of religions and language, are eventually erased.
The profundity of this message is not easily articulated. But its imperative to bear witness to Him who died for this message, its essential to proclaim to a world that is drowning in the irony of greater estrangement in an age of better communicative technology, immense poverty in a rising affluence and a proliferating loss of individuality in a milieux of growing freedom of thought and speech.
To the world... this is hope. Enunciated."
