Blogging Around

I responded to Hannah's blog 'Change of Mind: Real Love.' Hannah wrote about her changing opinion concerning love, after comparing the film Once, and other films she’s grown up watching like The Notebook and Dear John.

Dear Hanz,

I also have had a shift in my opinion of ‘love’ recently, similar to yours after watching Once. To be totally honest, I love love love love Nicholas Sparks movies. In case you didn’t realized, ABC family played The Notebook, The Time Traveler’s Wife, A Walk to Remember, and Leap Year all back to back Saturday and Sunday. I was devastated to realize I wouldn’t be able to sit on my couch having a movie marathon, due to studying for AP test and other homework. While I did manage to catch the end of The Time Traveler’s Wife, I watched it with a different perspective than when I have first seen it, as a hopeless romantic in 8^th grade. I’d still call myself a hopeless romantic, but what I find romantic is far different.

In the two years that had passed between that original viewing and now, I’ve been exposed to more ‘real’ love. Entering high school, it’s hard not to have your views changed when there are teenagers hooking up left and right. Is that love? It’s surely a physical expression of it, but which is more important? The physical or the emotional side?  

What all of the crazy love story movies have in contact is a lot of physical contact. After all, most of them are just a bunch of bad acting, which ruins the emotional aspect of the story, with a lot of special effects, kissing/sex, and staring into each other’s eyes to distract us from what love should actually be. Let’s face it: the couple that’s gushy all the time is downright annoying. I’ve seen many relationships that are far more stable than Ally and Noah’s, or Henry and Clare’s. Those are the couples that spend hours talking, can adapt from hanging out with friends to a date night, and make each other laugh. And they’re often normal teenagers, who get stressed and have bad hair days and lots and lots of flaws.

I think there’s a saying somewhere that falling in love means loving another person flaws.  Characters in movies rarely have flaws, or at least not ‘real’ ones. They’re perfect, but I know that when I fall in love I will be nowhere close to perfection. I hope that there’s someone out there willing to accept that, and help me get a little closer.

Did I still record a bunch of those sappy movies to watch next weekend? Of course. But more of the fact that I love watching them with my friends and I wish I had Rachel McAdams’s hair versus wishing for a love story like the one on screen. So, movie night after the AP? I still think the academy guys would benefit greatly from watching The Notebook.

Much love,

Charlie 

I also thoroughly enjoyed Derek’s blog ‘It Matters: Groupthink and the GOP’. He wrote about the zigzagging GOP campaign and the rationale behind it: we all follow the crowd.

Dear Derek,

We’re in high school, another perfect example of the concept you describe in the above blog post. In my two years of high school, we’ve already seen crazy fashion trends come and go, no matter how bad they actually look when everyone starts wearing it, most of us teenagers feel the need to conform as well. In the movie Mean Girls, a prank is played on queen bee Regina George, to have two holes cut into her shirt. Instead of being ridiculed for having holes in her shirt, all of the other girls cut holes in their shirt and it becomes the latest fashion trend.

Whether it be fashion trends or presidential candidates, if something is getting attention we hold it in higher esteem regardless of its face value. In fact, I’ve seen your theory about endorsements in action. On Election Day a few years ago, I remember asking my mother who she was voting for. She was informed about the major elections like for President, Vice President, etc. but for lower level positions, like new judges for Cook Country; she said she was simply voting for whoever the Chicago Tribune was backing.  

Now while I was far less informed than her about voting, safe with the knowledge that it wouldn’t be my responsibility as a citizen for a couple more years, I was still curious if that was an accurate way to vote. My mom is still far more politically active than the majority of the population, she often writes to politicians with her opinions, which leads me to think: what about everyone else? When the rest of Illinois and the U.S. votes, do they know what exactly they’re voting for, or are they just voting for whoever is flashiest?

           I don’t think that’s an accurate way to govern a country, but perhaps like Mitt Romney, it was inevitable. Informed citizens can only hope that the top-level media is getting the facts right concerning candidates’ platforms and accurately informing the voting population instead of being influence by donations and super PACs.

            Derek, your prediction was accurate. There were still some highs and lows, but three months later Romney is the GOP candidate still standing. Best of luck to him and current President Barak Obama on the long road to November.

Inevitably,

Charlie

Dialectics: Fate and Control

Harry, you don’t need to worry about the future. It’s already been decided for you, long before you were born in a room with a crazy old lady and an evil, evil man. Neo, you too. You’re ‘the one’? Don’t know what that means? You’ll figure it out, we all have oodles and oodles of faith in you because we’ve heard it our whole live. We might live in this horrible wasteland, but we all know that you have the power to get us out.

You say I should go to the Oracle, because what she says is law?  But what if she tells that the one who had guided me all this way will die, and it will be my fault? This is insanity! I don’t want to be ‘the one’. That’s not how I want my life to end up! I can be whoever I want to be, just like my parents told me when I was a kid! I can make my own decisions, thank you very much.

I am all-knowing and all-powerful, and I can’t be defied. I may not have the power to change things, and make them my own, but what I can only speak the truth. I speak of the future, I speak of the past. I can inspire hope and dreams but also crush them. I can tell you what your ‘fate’ is, but are you ready? The future is heavy stuff; best leave it up to me. You can delude yourself with these ideas over ‘control’ and ‘freedom’. I might even let you make a few harmless choices along the way. Alas, the big stuff, I already know.

Even love? You’ll take away finding the most wonderful part of life from me, and expect me to just love this women [who only loves me because you told her she would] unconditionally? Why can’t I choose for myself, experience some heartbreak and maybe some happiness along the way? Ever heard of ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’? I don’t get a journey, thanks to you all knowing fate. All I get is pain and far too much stress to be any good.

You’re unhappy now, but what about afterwards when you’re a celebrated hero? Will you think your destiny is so bad then? All this wandering around, trying to figure out what you’re good at and who is trustworthy, isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It just leads to useless dead time in an already short life. The better alternative is just being told your inevitable strengths and weaknesses, and other tidbits to, well how put this: take you to the right path.

But what if, even if I knew this information, what I was ‘born to do’ right from the state, but even with all that, not end up on the right path? What if some extraneous event occurred, one that you didn’t see coming when everything was decided that set me free? What if I could make my own decisions then? Would your word still be law? Would that convince all this people that I’m not ‘the one’ and I don’t want to be? Sure, being able to move at the speed of life is cool, but so is being able to go to sleep without fear at night.

Oh but my dear, that would assume I made a mistake! After all, I’m just another part of the matrix.

So what do we know? What is the truth? All we know is that we don’t. We could be controlled by some outside force, guiding out every move or manipulating our minds to do their bidding. Or we’re all just random parts of the universe, interacting randomly at a matter of our own will and the will of those around us. It’s up to us to choice which one we believe, and then to guide our actions as such. As Neo knows, it is possible to defy fate, if fate is real at all.