The Message behind the Pursuit of Happyness
The “Pursuit of Happyness” is one of my favorite movies ever and It’s because the message it has throughout the movie. With my generation of millennials I see more and more people wanting thing everything handed out to them, everything should be easy to achieve and the government paying for everything, but in this country, you have to work for what you achieve, you have to make sacrifices, and you’re going to fail multiple times; but as long as you keep pushing forward, you can make it happen and that’s the message this movie portrays with Chris (Will Smith) is that of “Hard Work”, If you’re prepared to work really hard, you can achieve what you want. Despite the numerous obstacles, Chris wanted a better life for him and his son, and was willing to work beyond the multiple obstacles, for this, in the long run, he was rewarded.
Okay, let’s do the introductions first. The man that you see is Chris Gardner, the protagonist of the movie a middle-aged man with a wife and a five-year-old son, whose job is to go around convincing doctors to buy a bone density scanner. He can hardly pay his rent with the proceeds of this device. His wife ends up leaving him with the kid and he needs to keep providing for him too.
Now, let’s cut to the scene. On his way to his usual sales calls, he sees a man who pulls up in an expensive sports car. Chris: “I just have two questions for you. What do you do, and how do you do it?” The man responds, “I am a stockbroker.” Chris: “Have to go to college to be a stockbroker, right?” Man: “Not necessarily. You just have to be good with numbers and good with people.”
The man heads to his office, leaving Chris amidst a sea of smiling stock brokers, wondering to himself: “They all look so damn happy to me. Why couldn’t I look like that?”
That thinking is coming from a person who has not gone to a college! And we, who have all the necessities of life (luxuries too, for many) often get satisfied with as little as a Facebook like. I am not saying we need to be greedy, but we must not let mediocrity become integral to all parts of our life.
We see that Chris Gardner is now thinking beyond sales. He wants to be a stockbroker. But as mentioned earlier, he doesn’t even have a college education. So, what can he do to fulfill his new-found dream?
Chris waits multiple times to have the opportunity to talk to Jay who is with the Resource Head of Dean Witter, a stockbroking firm. Chris had seen a flyer about an internship offered by the firm, whereby he could become a stockbroker. He knew his application would not even be considered so he wanted to personally convince the man about his potential. They are in a cab, and Chris is going on and on about how he can handle tough situations, but the man is busy solving the Rubik’s Cube and hardly listens to Chris.
What Chris does is proclaims that he can solve it. Obviously, the man is not convinced but still hands it to him. Even the cab driver looks at Chris with derision. But slowly, Chris gets going and solves the puzzle by the time the man reaches his destination. This leaves a good impression on Jay, who later on offers Chris an opportunity to appear for an interview. In this age, where we don’t have the handicap of not having a college degree, we have stiff competition making it more important for us to prove ourselves.
Now Chris finally goes to the interview for the internship but arrives in sweatpants and a wife beater, ideally one would be all suited up for an occasion like this.
The night before this interview, Chris’ wife had left him, frustrated by their financial problems. Add to that the fact that the landlord wanted to throw Chris out but had agreed to let him stay for a week more if Chris painted the house, which was what he was doing when the police knocked on his door and arrested him for not paying numerous parking tickets.
He was only released the next morning. And he ran to the office for the interview. The more interesting part comes here. He says to the interviewers: “Can I say something? Um, I’m the type of person that if you ask me a question and I don’t know the answer, I’m gonna tell you that I don’t know. But I bet you what, I know how to find the answer and I will find the answer.”
One of the interviewers asks him: “What would you say if a man walked in here with no shirt, and I hired him? What would you say?”
Chris: “He must have had on some really nice pants.”
He rose to the challenge and presented his reasons for candidacy with such strength, determination, and passion that his employers were forced to look beyond his appearance.
Jumping to the next scene; this is the scene that breaks everyone’s heart. Chris just became homeless has now where to go and nowhere to sleep, has his son with him and you can just see his freaking out, his son tells him that the machine isn’t a time machine to which Chris responds that it is. He uses their imagination to travel to a time where dinosaurs still roam the earth, and they escape to a cave for safety. That cave was a public bathroom where they spend the night, that night his son slept in his arms, Chris was covering his ears so he didn’t hear the people trying to come in and with one of his legs secures the door, so they couldn’t, you could see it in his face that he had hit rock bottom and just was destroyed about the situation. But he didn’t give up.
This is probably the best scene in the movie. It’s a Saturday and Chris takes his son to play basketball. His son is really into the game and in spite of being so small, gets the ball into the basket. Chris tries to do the same but fails. He then tells his son, that there will be things in which he can excel but basketball is not one of them, so he should not waste his time playing around with the ball. He goes on to add that he himself had been mediocre in the game and that the son could not be any better than the father.
Hearing this, his son is disappointed and starts packing the ball. Chris realizes his mistake and says the following words which become the soul of the movie:
“Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you, you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period. All right?”
Every day Chris must run from work to secure a place in line at the shelter, so he and his son could have a bed at night, thus putting himself at a serious disadvantage with the other candidates for the job. Due to his limited time, he must find a way to make his sales calls at work more efficient, even going against protocol when he reaches out to very high-level prospective clients.
Even at the lowest point of his life, when he was sleeping with his son on the restroom floor of a subway station, he maintained the illusion that he was just as much a viable candidate as the other interns who had homes and all the luxuries of modern-day businessmen. He never stopped doubting himself, and confidence is a major part of the recipe of success.
HAPPYNESS is not money, but happiness is seeing your life stable, your child happy, and your future bright. Sometimes we need money to make us happy, but it’s not the money itself, but what the money brings us, and no one is just going to bring us money but you have to go out and achieve it, and pursue your own HAPPYNESS.
