Eternal Sunshine

I used to post about movies fairly regularly. I guess that stopped when I stopped watching new movies as often. Now I watch shows and YouTube. All those Disneyland videos are great for having on in the background while cleaning and such, but they do certainly end up taking up time, don't they? (Looking at you, Fresh Baked.) The reality is, I just watch less movies these days.

I did watch one recently, though. One that's been in my queue for years, as most of them have been. At this point, I browse my queue rather than other pages when I'm looking for something to watch; there's just so much in there. Anyway, I finally got around to watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Definitely there are aspects to this film that are very much me. Simply the style of it with that non-linear quality and with the emotions going in the forefront, above plot. Also the type of characters and relationships. The type of thing I tend to end up going for.

But what I want to focus on is a more general concept. Specifically, the movie talks about the idea of inevitable flaws in relationships. In a more general sense, though, I'm going to broaden that out and take it to life as a whole. Just as no relationship with be perfect and so you have to decide that you're willing to go through all the imperfections with someone, life is not perfect. And you have to decide to go through and take what is good and just work through the rest.

This movie stated that concept in such a matter of fact way. And all of the chaos that it took to get to that final statement in the end is quite a perfect reflection of how that realization happens in reality. Life is hard. We get pulled in all sorts of directions and we get confused and muddled and not sure of things. But when you realize that oh, this is how life is .  . . and that's okay--that's a good place to be in.

"Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" . . . is that something you want or not? It's tempting to think of the mind living in endless sunshine with not a spot in sight, but in reality spotlessness has nothing to do with reality. In reality, there are spots. And taking away the spots takes away all the good things, too. So we can think of the concept of eternal sunshine . . . and we can just be content with working with all the flaws.