Here I am writing this entry and there you are
reading it. What would have happened if I hadn’t dropped the other college
program I was in? I wouldn’t be writing this, for sure; we wouldn’t have met
each other! By the same token, many situations wouldn’t and would have happened,
none of us know what, when and why. The
question: what would have happened if….? What if…? Is, to me, one of the “never-
will-be-answered questions” in our lives
as human beings, we will never know because there are too many options from
just one different choice we make. Sometimes it is very hard to choose between
one option or the other since we start thinking about the consequences, or what
will happen after making THAT decision. That’s the sort of discussions or
conversation that (as we saw in class) R. Frost used to have in his walking
with his friend….., and those were the inspiration for Frost’s poem: The Road
Not Taken which we saw a couple of weeks ago.
While
reading that poem I couldn’t help remember Jaco Van Dormael’s movie “Mr Nobody”. The movie
is placed in different life stages of the main character Nemo Nobody (Nemo
means “Nobody” in Latin) . During those stages – as a kind, as a teenager, as a
35 years-old man- Nemo made different choices in his life which lead him to
different lives, we don’t really know which of those lives is the real one. To
understand, Nemo is telling his story to a journalist in a future 2092, he is
118 years old and the last mortal human. The first “great” choice Nobody has to make is
to decide (after his parent’s divorce) whether staying with his father or going
with his mother, in a train station at the very exact moment in which he cannot
change that decision. Michael Sullivan, for The Washington Post online movie
reviews states that in sum “What is “Mr. Nobody” about? For one thing, it’s
about that universal sense that life has passed you by, and the longing for the
nonexistent reset button that will allow you a second chance. It’s also about
the nature of time and causality, and the notion that many — perhaps infinite —
different paths might coexist at the same time”. http://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/mr-nobody-movie
review/2013/10/30/bb919da0-402c-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html).
I
really enjoyed the movie. At the beginning it was kind of difficult to grasp,
but then you reconstruct the possibilities, at the same time I asked and
imagine my different possibilities if I had made different choices in my life.
Maybe that’s not the kind of thought good to overthink, though. Anyway, I
strongly recommend you to watch this movie, the soundtracks, the imagery and
the science behind the story are truly catchy and make you think.
Here
is the trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpi0qsp3v_w. Hope you enjoy the film as I did.
Finally, what would have happened if you had decided not to take this
study program? I mean, not being a teacher in the near future? I
think that maybe I would have continued the other study program to become a
chef!
Have a
nice week.
Carolina, I have read your entry and I believe that you have a very important point when you ask us what decisions we could have had made in certain periods of time. Well, I usually think a lot before making any decision. On the one hand, it is very helpful for I'm capable of "seeing" all the options I have. However, this also implies that I will imagine myself living different "lives" if I choose one or the other. On the other hand, thinking a lot is not that important. That is why I sometimes prefer to keep my options open, like Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken, because in every decision we make, we could be brave enough to deal with this "unknown" future, and therefore, live life as it is given to us.
ResponderBorrarAnyway, people can determine their own destiny according to what they believe is appropriate, but they never have to forget what they really want to do --I mean, not what others want them to do.