I was watching the movie Revolutionary Road tonight, and there's this clinically insane character. Throughout the whole movie, he's the only one telling anything remotely like it is. I could write a whole entry on just that, but the thing that sticks out in my head is this one line:
"Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness."
I missed the next five or ten minutes of the movie because I was stuck pondering that line. Even my mother, who usually doesn't care to ponder the deep and philosophical, gave a realizing, appreciative "oh".
It's just so blindingly true. A lot of people claim their lives are empty. That's easy. People throw around how their lives have no meaning all the time. But rarely do they add "and it's always going to be that way." Such complaints about the futility of one's life are typically punctuated by
by the making of goals and resolutions, pacts and contracts with yourself to make your life better. We're trained to end on a high note, so we hold onto the hope that now we've realized our mistakes and can fix them with a new mental attitude and a montage of impulse buys like on the movies.
We don't think "oh well, I've maxed out my potential. I just suck." But that has got to be the case sometimes. Maybe more often that not. We usually fall right back into our old routines, living the same ole life that we consider substandard. Empty.
So is all that hope completely false? That's the most depressing thing I've heard in a long time.
So that crazy movie guy was right. It doesn't take any guts at all to realize your life sucks. To admit it's hopeless, however, takes serious guts.
The question I'm asking myself now is, are my guts serious enough?
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