Life is grey. Not black and white.

The pianist is by far one of the best movies I have seen so far. It has taught me so many lessons that I am very sure to use for the rest of my life. Looking back at the movie I was fascinated by how despite not having a home to live or even adequate food the pianist was able to fight on and still remain alive. This in turn makes me believe that bad moments don’t come to last but come to pass. I in my own personal life have had extremely low moments either doing very badly on a set of exams or something terrible happening in my family but those bad moments have gone by and now I have completely forgotten about them. At the same time it was interesting that the person who gave the pianist the coat and food when put in a bad moment ended up dying and not being saved. Hence life is not always black and white. If life works out for a person it does not mean it will work out for the other person.

Don’t let others let you down

Hidden Figures actually was a movie that inspired me right after watching it. I was amazed by how one of the central characters i.e Katherine Johnson fought against all the sexist and gender related barriers in her society back then and still made an honorable contribution to her country by making successful calculations of orbital flight. This has actually motivated me to continue fighting for some goals I have set for this semester despite how hard it may be to achieve them.

The Clever Mr Ripley

Watching this film on a friday night left me thinking on how a person’s innate talents can be used to a wrong advantage. Ripley was so great at forgery and impersonation that it became very hard for me to even read into his true character for the most part of the film. In the beginning, many students could respect his hardworking mentality but then with all the faking that happened later on in the film it seemed like Ripley was trying to steal Dicke’s lifestyle from him in a dark way using his talents which then made me become much more skeptical of his character. In my opinion, I feel we should use our talents for improving ourselves and the world around us rather than using it to our advantage to steal something from another person.

The strength of love

Last Friday evening, I got the great opportunity to rewatch one of my favourite films of childhood (Wall-E). However, watching this film from the lens of a grown up made me read much more into what the movie had in store for the audience to learn from. I was able to learn about how powerful love can be between two individuals (in this case Wall-E and Eve) such that despite any barriers/obstacles they encounter their love for each other makes them persevere through it. This was very evident in the bond of Wall-E and Eve, who despite being harmed by the people in the ship, they still fought through it all!

Learning from Setbacks

This movie was a very interesting one which involved drama through the way Jack persists in trying to bring Christmas to Halloween town, comedy through their inability to bring the right “christmas” feeling to the population, and finally romantic due to the secret love between Sally and Jack. However, the main thing I took out from the film that I relate strongly to in my life is learning from my setbacks. Jack, tried his best to bring the Christmas season to his hallowed themed town, however the whole town faced many issues trying to adapt to it and the world hated his halloween styled gifts. So although Jack faced many setbacks at the end he realised that it was important to let Santa go, which in the end brought Christmas back to the world and Santa rewarded Halloween town with snowfall so that they can experience Christmas too! Hence, I have learnt that in life if you cannot change something, accept it, let it go and learn from it.

The power of conviction

After seeing the Film Hacksaw Ridge, I am impressed by how far one’s own conviction brings an individual. If we are a strong believer at something it seems that despite whatever society thinks, we can accomplish whatever we believe we can which shows the power of will. In my past, I have been determined to accomplish many things and over time they have worked out and the film reinforces this concept through the character of Doss, whose strong belief in not holding arms makes him one of the most courageous medics during battle. I believe the main lesson for me to take from this movie is that if we strongly believe in something that society may not believe in, then regardless of how many ever hardships we go through we can still fulfil our beliefs.

The power of working together than alone

When I was at the Stewart Park Playground today I was surprised to see how much work we had been able to do by just looking at the results produced. Below is a photo showing some of the awesome stuff we built for playground.

 

Then it hit me that if I had rather tried building this all by myself then I would not have been able to do so or it might have taken me days to achieve it whereas working in a group led us to do it in only a few hours that too whilst having a great deal of fun. This in turn allowed me to reflect on the power of working towards a goal together than alone because the more people there are the greater the support and hence the more achievable the goal is.

Right or Wrong?

Having Scott Miller describe his experiences with his role as a defense attorney I got thinking whether our current judicial system is designed the right way to offer the most safety to our current society. In his speech, Scott even told us quite naturally that he never felt uneasy about the fact that at times he might end up defending the case of someone who might actually be the guilty one (for example for committing a murder). This hit me hard and told me that something needed to change perhaps in the future we need some sort of truth-lie detectors through which the guilty himself must answer questions on whether he is guilty or not as science can offer a much more objective view towards issues than humans who are naturally engrained to be subjective based on our senses.