Garden State

I just watched a 2004 movie entitled "Garden State."
Although I wondered if the premise would have been strengthened more if the producers had cast older actors, I did enjoy the many themes that were explored in the movie. It might come across decadent, self-indulgent at first, but there is a clear thick philosophical narrative behind it. The message is one of feeling life intensely, shamelessly and fervently with all its pain, chaos, grief and joy. That numbing out the psyche with a bubbling assortment of modern day pills will surely suppress pain, but it will also dampen joy. To live life, is to embrace the good, the bad and ugly.
Embracing all aspects of it, is the very essence of living.

One line from the movie particularly resonated with me where the main depressed, pill-popping character says: "I’m 26 years old and I’ve spent my whole life waiting for something else to start. Now I realize that this is all there is and I’m going to try to live my life like that."

It is at times difficult to accept that 'this is it,' 'this is all there is.' Perhaps it is years of indoctrination by parents, by society at large that has taught us there is something beyond the mundane limits of everyday existence, that makes us lazy about living life to the fullest here and now. I am certainly guilty as charged. I turned 30, 33, 35, 37, and expected life to begin with each passing birthday, but instead sank deeper and deeper into a state of nihilism, or as Emile Durkeim aptly put it 'anomie.' This amorphous, borderless, restless. free floating state of anguish that makes one feel like a mere body occupying space and time with no substance, and certainly no impact on the world that surrounds the self.

Oh, and everyday I tell myself this day will be different from the previous one. That I will fulfill something, anything I've longed to fulfill in my 37 years on this earth. It will be a day filled with purpose, with raison d'etre pouring out in streams from inside and out, spilling out from the edges. But alas, that day never comes. There is always something distracting me from reaching out and grabbing life by the horns: chores, work, my girl-cats, exercise, shopping, socializing (however far and few that may be). But it has to come at some point, I refuse to die before having materialized my dreams, as cliche as that may be. Ever heard of that expression 'the fear of dying is the fear of never having lived?' We only get one shot at the business of living (unless of course you believe in the promise of some after life, brimming with medieval ghostie, ghosties looking to cater to your every whim and caprice in the gates of heaven - oh, grow up already people!) But yes, how hard it is to live, I mean to really live. How easy it is to just succumb to a state of mind-numbing boredom, or as someone aptly put it, 'lost paradise of nonexistence.'