Sunday, June 19, 2011
The Art of Surviving
"We live alone. We die alone. Everything else is just an illusion." That's how "The Art of Getting By" begins. The movie stars Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts as high school students getting ready to graduate and dealing with the usual issues of grades, parents, friends and falling in love. Highmore is a bit of a fatalist. He believes the opening statement, but do you? Let's take a look. Do we live alone? I'm sure we all feel alone at various times in our lives, but do we really live alone. Certainly, we have friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, children, other family members and co-workers. Sometimes even when we have the most people in our lives, we feel the most alone. We're lacking something - a connection, a bond, someone who understands what we're going through at that particular time in our lives. Do we die alone? Pretty much. Many of us will outlive our spouses. Some will even outlive their children, which is always tragic. Even if we're surrounded by loved ones when we die, we do in fact go off to Heaven or wherever we go completely by ourselves. Is everything else just an illusion? I don't think so. Unless you're David Copperfield or Criss Angel, I don't think everything else is an illusion. Some people do live their lives in their own world completely out of touch with reality, so I guess in a sense, they are living an illusion. But if it's real to them, does that make a difference? Who are we to tell someone else if their thoughts and beliefs are real or an illusion? If it's THEIR reality, is that enough? Is learning the art of getting by enough? Or should we strive for something more? Simply getting by doesn't seem like a very rewarding or enjoyable life. What do YOU think?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's an illusion because this world has become one where the underhanded and trickiest survive. Survival of the fittest no longer means passing natures tests.. it means making a dollar by all means necessary, even if that requires compromising the quality of your relationships. Most people not only lack real relationships in their lives, but they aren't even real to themselves. Most relationships are based off of convenience rather than communication and honesty. No matter how much it might not seem that way, we all die alone.. and it's all of out faults.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the idea of ILLUSION means to people…
ReplyDeleteI think that… is the real question here. Because if we look at our world- or any world for that matter- with a sense of detachment, or that the subject matter which is to be brought to us; our lives and our stories, is infact illusion, then waht is the reality or unreality of every moments passing. Now… and now…
and even… now. Gone in an instant.
I do not believe that everything else is an illusion. ‘Everything else’ is what makes us feel, and what makes us grow with wisdom. It is the frightened, of endings all together, that will try to escape their own reality through the dishonesties and deceptions of this world; that will unfortunatley bequeath to the ultimate ‘illusion’ of everything.
"We live alone, we die alone. Everything else is just an illusion"
ReplyDeleteI think that it actually is an illusion. What happens in the middle of birth and death is life. Every person has a completely different life, a completely different illusion. We have the life that belongs to us, the one we have gained from our actions and desires. Everyone has different goals and likes and the things you do to accomplish your goals is what creates the path of your own life. You create your own illusion, so when you already have nothing more to give to the world you die alone.