I try to watch a movie every Sunday evening, and yesterday I picked “Dead Poets Society”. I think I was too young to appreciate it when it was released, so I am glad that I’m watching it at a point of my life when I’m able to fully appreciate it.
I make a conscious effort to read a lot more and watch more movies than my old self used to, because I think I need to deliberately design time for my thoughts to be consistently provoked. Sometimes I get to caught up in the day to day, and I forget why I do the things I do in the first place.
It could have been me, the young boy who took his life in the movie.
Each time I hear about someone taking his or her own life, I always automatically think – it could have been me. In the context of the movie, I remember how I used to feel, how it seemed like there were no other options, how it seemed like life was not worth living because life didn’t allow me to be myself.
I still remember the pain and suffocation of being made to feel like everything about me was wrong and I was just letting down the world by existing as me.
Watching the movie jolted me back to the reality that I am in, that I am working this hard not because I want to achieve any typical milestones of success. I have a very specific goal of working towards a world that will empower more people to fulfill their true potential by being unafraid to be themselves and pursue their highest calling.
I do forget that sometimes. I worry incessantly about unimportant details and over-indulge in my neuroses. I still think too much about how people would react to me when it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I am not here to be likable. I am here to do the work other people are unwilling to do. I think I am willing to risk alienation in order to do that work.
But I have a feeling I wouldn’t be alone, because I know I will find my kind of people, no matter how far and few in between.