late night decisions

It's currently late, and about half an hour ago I was tired. It's funny how quickly things change. So now I'm still awake and I've had multiple thoughts running through my head, all of which I think I will write about in the next day or so. So be prepared for a super blast of thoughts over the next 24 hours, assuming I remember them all when I wake. But i wanted to write a quick note about a movie I watched tonight. This is a movie I had seen when I was in high school, and at that point in time I remember thoroughly not enjoying it and walking away feeling like it was stupid. While tonight there were still some of the same feelings I noticed this movie had pretty decent monologues. They all seemed to reflect upon one thing which the general idea was you can't just leave a place, state of mind, emotions or anything and move to a different place and expect things to b different. Human emotions, problems, thoughts etc. follow us more or less where ever we go. There is only one real way to conquer such things, and that is to face them head on. The movie was called "The Beach" and I recall watching it with a handful of church kids in high school; I believe it was a group of girls who had picked the movie due to the current popularity of Leonardo DiCaprio, way to go girls... The following movie as I recall left everyone in the room feeling like two hours could have and should have been spent more wisely, but maybe that was just me. Either way tonight I was watching this movie. And if you are not familiar with the film it's about a character who moves to Thailand in search of something, hopefully paradise, in which to live and escape all of his troubles of the world. Once he finds this island where he believes paradise will be he realizes that it is not what he had hoped, despite temporary moments of feeling wonderful due to his perspective in rejecting anything that did not fulfill his happy state of mind. The characters in the film consequentially are faced with a dilemma when one member of the group becomes very ill due to injury and will die if not given the proper medical attention. Well, no one wanted to help because this was such a downer, so they end up moving this injured fellow outside of their camp culture to die away from them so to get back to the carefree life of living in paradise. While on other fronts our main character realizes his insecurities, while easily glossed over by acting a bit more confident towards others, still exist; as well as his worldly desires, specifically his desire for a flirtatious girl. I believe some character even states something to the extent of, 'You didn't really think that you would stop feeling these emotions just by leaving the mainland culture?'

So this is the thought I have been dwelling on over the past 30+ minutes now that has kept me awake. We can run or leave things all we want, but will we really be escaping the inner darkness of who we are or don't want to be? I think our culture is in a trend at the moment believing that drastic and sometimes silly life changes will free us from some believed scum that we live in and make everything better. I know I will touch on this tomorrow when/if I write but the first example that comes to my mind was struck recently in a conversation with my cousin-in-law about the latest trend that so many people have jumped on of being glutton intolerant, aka allergic to wheat. And by somehow avoiding any wheat intake they will magically feel all better inside, and things such as having gas will stop occurring. This is not to say there is no one out there truly allergic to wheat, I am not ignorant enough to state that to be true, but I will say it seems like it's just another trend in most cases trying to lead people to believe they are proactive about how they live. Once again, this is not necessarily bad, because sure it makes people feel good about themselves. But when does the situation turn from being small things, as ridiculous as they may be, to big things where people are blatantly just avoiding coping with the hardships of life? And what purpose is it to make drastic jumps if we can not or are not willing to recognize that once the trend is gone, we are still with the same issues. In the case of the glutton free people, gas will still exist... assuming that by not eating wheat their gas problem really did disappear. And if it didn't, then we unknowingly ate something with wheat in it and that is the reason for the apparently socially uncomfortable fact that people have gas sometimes. Either way I'm afraid that there will always be some sort of belief that if we can just escape this one thing, if we can just stop eating wheat, if we can just leave behind our baggage we will be able to live happily without ever having to worry about anything ever again. Silly, I know.