This is blog entry #1142, dear reader.Numbers are strange things. Simplistically, they aid us to plot events and give us a sense of volume. Like time, they do not exist, but are purely labels.
My beautiful boyfriend and I saw Stranger Than Fiction earlier this week. Marketed as a comedy, I found it more a pensive and philosophical piece about life, time, brilliance and mediocrity. I didn't laugh once, but I did find myself welling up two or three times.
Harold Crick hears a voice, narrating his every move. It turns out, the narrator is Kay Eiffel, a novelist. When the narrator reveals Harold will die, our protagonist decides he must do something to ensure the finale of Kay's tale is changed. Harold wants to live.
Kay's book is called Death And Taxes. Apparently, the two things we human beings cannot escape from. We can't escape death, that's for sure, but we can escape taxes, as Harold's love interest, Ana, proves. So what's behind the death/taxes facade? I think the concepts of death and taxes ask us if our lives have been worthwhile. Did the tax we paid to central government feed a starving baby or kill school children on a bus? When we are laid upon our deathbeds, will we look back on our lives with regret and horror or with pleasure, approval and a sense of celebration? Or could it possibly be that only our death, our act of dying makes our lives something special? And is that more important than having a happy and fulfilling life? If so, does that make us selfish?
Which is better, dear reader?
A hero dies, but the story lives on.
I don't want to die. I have so much I want to do, so many things I want to say, so many places I'd like to visit. I want fulfilment. Death, for me, now, would come too soon. But I do fear it and wonder how I'd cope. I know my life, so far, has not been something I'd look back on with joy, but I'd like it to be. That's why I want it to carry on a bit more. I need to fix it. And I'm sure my death will not be something special, nothing for which a posthumous medal might be awarded. So I have to live, you see, dear reader, to change things, to make my life something worthwhile.
Existentialism aside, in the void bereft of time and numbers, I'd like a had a good life label, please.
10 comments:
You're a loving boyfriend, father to two precious dogs, you're adored by millions of blog fans around the world...
Like the song says, measure your life in love. You are loved.
You're a loving boyfriend, father to two precious dogs, you're adored by millions of blog fans around the world...
Like the song says, measure your life in love. You are loved.
I must second what Brian says, for I most certainly agree!
You sweet peas. Thank you.
... We're always around, aren't we?... And we're never pleased with our own destiny, fate, you name it... That's also true.
Winter's a bitch!...
Hugs! :-)
I'll take a happy life over a grand demise any day!
One of the many short stories I never got around to writing was about a man who wakes to find everyone he knows has dissappeared.
A stranger tells him his entire life up to that point was watched and controlled by the governmenrt, and all his relationships were engineered, all his friends played by actors. But now funding has been withdrawn, his "friends" reassigned, and he's on his own.
The man refuses to believe it - because that's the kind of mad conspiracy delusion only mad people believe. He walks away into the real world, unable to see the join.
As for thoughts about death...I'd be happy with 70 years in total, if only the first 35 hadn't been a complete waste of time.
i want to see that film-do u know when its on general release?
I don't know. We saw it at a small art house cinema here in the city. perhaps it's one of those limited release movies.
oh thats a shame id love to see it
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