Tonight I watched the movie “Call Me By Your Name”. At first, I got lost in the story; after two hours, I finally began building my connection with the movie; at the very end, I was moved and deeply engaged with the movie. It was a simple story: no superhero, no fairy tale, no great adventure, and no space wars. But in the end, it was very touching and thoughtful.
There are two scenes that I really love:
The first was the father’s conversation with Elio:
"In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”
We all have our lives for just once. It is the mortality that makes our life experience, our energy, and our time limited and thus precious. Nowadays, thanks to Google and all the social media, we have such abundance of news pieces, ideas, connections, and opportunities, which are easily accessible and barely cost any effort to enjoy. On the other hand, the abundance exaggerates the "power law of life": those what is truly valuable to us require much larger effort to find and engage with. It can be a long-term deep relationship or a career choice in life. We are now so vulnerable to have our attention and time consumed by those abundant, easily accessible pieces. After falling into the trap, we become numb, passive, and, as stated in the quote, bankrupt. That is not what we human are dreamed of when we built those disruptive technologies and products. We are given the life once, so it is extremely valuable to find your true desire and meet someone that you truly care about. If you come across it, please go deeply into it and exposed yourself to the experience of the moment.
The second scene was at the last, when Ollie hanged up the telephone, stared at the fire, and at that moment, he seemed to lost everything in his heart. We all have had such a moment, when we feel the inside world collapsed and all the excitement in life faded away. There is nothing wrong with it. It is the sense of losses that tells us what we truly care. It is the pains that tell us how much we cared about it. It is the experience that helps you settle your mind and focus on what you deeply care about.
In the end, I really hope we will be able to find and keep engaged with the desires that are truly meaningful to us.