This is exactly what I shouldn't be doing right now. The imaginary weight of my unwritten papers should be bearing down upon my very real conscience, but instead, iBlog. If there were a time during this semester that I should be the most stressed out, it is now. With four papers rustling their empty pages in the corners of my mind, the knowledge that my beloved seniors are graduating, and the regret that I haven't had the time to say proper goodbyes, I should be hysterical! But instead, I indulge myself in the exact way that I shouldn't, which is ironically what the movie "Serendipity" is about. If you haven't seen the movie, it's about a man who is so intrigued by a woman he met years ago that he goes on a hunting spree for her, despite the fact that he is soon to be married. Before I learned more about myself and the facts of life, I judged this type of person harshly. How could you be so indecisive, so willing to screw up a good thing? Couldn't you simply trust the path you were on? Watching this movie again, I am much more forgiving. It is so easy to get stuck, and even easier to seize any opportunity to either validate or escape your chosen lifestyle.
I know too many people who are stuck. I suppose to some extent everyone is "stuck," but I have developed a healthy respect for and fear of immobility. Were I to become an object rather than an instigator of my own life, I imagine that I too would become a self-professed "jackass" and radically depart from whatever path my life was on. So, are these people guilty of anything other than an attempt to reclaim their lives?
Trust in one's judgment is so much harder to maintain than I had previously understood. Until I entered college, morality seemed more or less black and white to me. Sure, there were grey areas, but for the most part it should be relatively simple to discern right and wrong. Since entering college, I have been confronted with truly difficult decisions, ones that are not a choice between right and wrong but between right and right. That is the most confusing and tricky decision to make of all. I have lately realized that my perspective on morality hasn't changed drastically--I've always tried to consider another's point of view. I just never had to make truly difficult decisions before. For some reason or another, life has gotten much harder recently.
And that brings me back to the idea of serendipity. Why is it at this particular time in my life that everything seems to be falling apart? My grandparents, my godmother, even my dog are all rapidly declining, and it was an especially cruel twist that on Easter Sunday all these potential crises were actualized in some form or another. But the worst aspect is my inability to make any decision. These situations do not call for my action or judgment...just my audience. I am stuck watching my loved ones suffer. My surprising reaction has been to ignore these problems when I can. Perhaps it's not so surprising after all, but the only way I can conceive of reclaiming my life is to cut these people out of it (yes, I consider my dog a person, and you would too if you met him). But I suppose I have a choice after all--to ignore the sometimes utterly devastating facts of life, or to face them. Whether it be bravely, hesitantly, or heartbrokenly, I can choose to face them. Without trying to sound melodramatic, I think this is the hardest choice I have had to make in my life. I don't typically face reality when I find it so agonizing.
Serendipity is over. The movie, I mean. That is just as well, since the prospect of following fortunate coincidences as a way of life did not make much sense to me. I am finished doing what I "shouldn't" be doing, a phrase that applies to a multitude of sins: ignoring people, abandoning homework, etc. But I also "shouldn't" be blogging, and had it not been for the serendipitous confluence of movie-watching and blogging, I would not have realized the pattern by which I have been living lately. Serendipity might help me un-stick myself after all.
