I saw the movie Boyhood. A pretty good movie, but not one worth winning an
Oscar. I wonder if we still know what an Oscar-winning movie is?! Yes, we do. Happy funerals and The Shawshank Redemption are Oscar-winning movies. Movies that
make one lose oneself in the story and wish for it never to end. The exact thing
happens with great books, Requiem for Fools and Beasts or Shantaram, for
example.
The last dialogue, at the end of the movie, got me thinking. If Seize the
moment! isn’t actually the other way around. Namely, that the moment seizes us,
in fact, and we cannot withstand it. And so I realized how much we are
mesmerized with dicta. We believe in them, we make believe that we carry our
lives according to them and we love to hear ourselves giving advice to others
by using them. Sow the wind and reap the
whirlwind. Good always prevails. Nothing is above love (or law, depending on the circumstances). A lie has short legs. A leopard can’t change
its spots. A handful of trade is a handful of gold. He who steals an egg will
steal an ox. Yes, there is a grain of wisdom in all of them, but they are
not the answer to our existence. In the end, life is impossible to be enframed
within dicta. And neither within games such as He loves me! He loves me not!, even if we can choose to ignore the
last remaining petal that would give us a response we would never validate as
true. While writing the aforementioned dicta, the following verses rang in my
mind (and they couldn’t be more appropriate):
Have no hope and be not afraid,
What is like the wave will perish
like a wave;
If they urge you, if they call
for you,
Remain still, no matter what.
Mihai Eminescu - Glossa
