opposites
A disjointed blog post about a series of realizations I had recently that are related to opposites.
Recently a friend had me take an enneagram test, and the most interesting question on the test for me was whether I agree to the statement: “it’s strange but I think that there is something beautiful about sadness.” I gave that question a big resounding YES.
I’ve always known that I find sadness beautiful but I never figured out why until I forced myself to do so for my WP3. In writing about photographing what I find beautiful, I made myself think about what I find beautiful in things that aren’t pretty and happy and nice. In answering that question, I came to realize that typically the sadder someone is about something, the more they cared about it, and the beauty isn’t in the sadness itself but in the realization of how much someone cared about something.
I talked about this realization with my friend and she made an interesting connection to the movie Inside Out. If you haven’t seen the film, the big-picture concept of the film is that it tells a story of the emotions inside us as anthropomorphized characters and their journey while “their person” struggles with a difficult time in her life. During the development of the film, creators of the film consulted with psychology professors at UC Berkeley, and an important realization for making the story work is that there has to be sadness for there to be happiness. A significant turning point in the film is when Joy fails to cheer up Sadness, and when Joy acknowledges that even she is sad. It was this realization that it’s important to embrace sadness rather than masking it with false happiness that allowed the emotion characters to progress in their “mission.”
In my scriptwriting class this semester I have been developing the script that I will be directing next semester. My script is about a mother who has to let go of her son who is truly leaving the home for the first time for work purposes. It’s very personal to me because it’s based on me planning to be in LA next semester, and this move possibly being a long-term move for my film career. So I was able to feel the emotions the mother in my story is experiencing because I’m empathizing with my mom, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why my script wasn’t communicating those emotions even though I’m telling almost the same story.
Recently I watched the 2013 film Fruitvale Station directed by Ryan Coogler, and I rewatched the Pixar short film Bao, and from these two films I learned that the loss that happens in each of these films is so heart-wrenching because the films did such a good job of showing the beauty of what was, before it was lost. Knowing this, I will be improving my script by adding scenes at the beginning that show the mother and son have a beautiful relationship, to better communicate why it’s so difficult for the mom to let go.
One must need something first for it to be satisfying to finally achieve it. When someone has received lots of approval and praise throughout their lives, it’s not so special when somebody else offers their approval. On the other hand, when someone who has lived their life being constantly criticized and made to believe they are not enough, it is deeply gratifying and meaningful to receive someone’s approval. I wrote about inner needs a little more in-depth in my “lessons from film” blog post.
Basically the moral of the story is that the lows in life are just as important as the highs. I don’t mean that in a depressing way, I just mean I think it’s important to realize that life is not meant to be a perfect happy smooth ride, as is often depicted on social media. When there’s a low, it’s important to recognize that it will eventually pass, and to look forward to the next high.
