Lady in the Water
We watched M. Night Shyamalan's latest tale last night. I really enjoyed the way he rendered his role as writer so transparent by explicitly pointing to and integrating the archetypes that writers use in crafting stories into the story itself. He has such fun killing off the critic. It's an exercise that all artists need to do mentally from time to time, but again, he shares that with the audience and integrates it into the story itself. I found this fun to watch.
The nugget that really caught me, though, was the notion of people being great through the impressions they make on others. Often, these impressions we make are never known to us. Most of us have moments of feeling like failures, of not understanding what could be meaningful and important in our own small lives. Shyamalan reminds us that our lives are always much, much bigger than we are, than our ordinary awareness of this thing we call 'my life.' It's very similar to what Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing. It was inspiring to remember this.
The nugget that really caught me, though, was the notion of people being great through the impressions they make on others. Often, these impressions we make are never known to us. Most of us have moments of feeling like failures, of not understanding what could be meaningful and important in our own small lives. Shyamalan reminds us that our lives are always much, much bigger than we are, than our ordinary awareness of this thing we call 'my life.' It's very similar to what Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing. It was inspiring to remember this.