Open the Void
I had a few contenders for this one: Touching the Open, Voiding the Water . This sounds really harsh, but, in light of the most recent and most horrific natural disaster, the Tsunami, there can't be much denying.... God does not care if you die, if your kids die, if you drown in the ocean, if you fall off a mountain...God does not care. YOU care. Those who love you here, care. Your ego, that knows the material world, cares. Your body cares about pain. God cares if you learn. God cares if you love. God cares far less about your physical life than your inner life. You are part of God, you came here to live and learn and be in a body so respect nature... it is not a fucking Disney ride. It is nature, it is God, it does not care, so take care of yourself.
Open Water is a great DVD, with lots of info about indie filmaking, and I'll also discuss Touching the Void, which I saw this summer. Open Water is made by a scuba diving/filmaking plus full-time job/young kid couple, who, god help them, deserve every success, about a young scuba-diving couple who get left behind a dive boat in, you guessed it...open water. It is based on an actual incident. Touching the Void was made about two men who ran into trouble decending a Chilean peak, and the DVD features their own interviews as well as re-enactments of their ordeal.
Both real incidents, but, no reality TV here, yet. All dialogue is scripted. Although some of the comments in Void were true, like "Simon, Simon...where are you??" In the all male Void, one guy literally cuts off the dangling "friend" to fall through a chasm in the mountain. They both somehow soldier on to survival, but the real world lambasts the cutter. Out in the Open we have the loving but late couple hanging out in the ocean doing, saying, thinking amazingly little except wonder where the sharks and boats are. Needless to say, the girl blames the guy, he gets munched by sharks and who knows if someone will come rescue her in time. Too many metaphors!
We often find ourselves stripped down to our essentials, facing nothing but fear, uncertainty, your god and yourself. I have definitely found this in nature, spending weeks at a time in very sparsely populated terrain, and I've gone days at a time seeing no people at all, just nature. It is a very risky thing to do and was particularly risky for me in a beat up old car, not even checking in with people, no cell phone or GPS in the 80's. And, unlike those in the movies, and most sane people, I often travelled alone. I felt God would take care of me, and, we were close. But I must have been extremely lucky, too.
But again, it's not just when you're voluntarily or involuntarily alone, or injured, or lost in nature (I've been both of those too, definitely not fun). I think people encounter the solitary nature of their strength & soul & connection to God in many ways throughout their lives... if they choose to do so and allow that in their lives. I think I prune down every seven years or so, go through a major life change, meaning, basically, I have lost people and pretty padding from my life, and that has promted much growth, and the addition of wonderful new people and lessons. But, pruning is cutting, it hurts.
I think the lesson we should take from these films, other than respect nature and connect yourself to God, is - how to choose our paths in life, make decisions that will lead to our true growth and happiness. The two films highlight two routes, based on differing circumstances relative to choice and control. On the mountain, the guys, if they just kept moving, could at least see which way was down. Direction was clear, the only issue was whether they could move through the pain. Real life rarely offers such clear direction.
In the open water, there really was nothing they could do. The only boats were very far and current was pulling them. Talk about afloat. They had each other, and their love., but no clear direction. In their case it was more about how to accept their fate than fight it, or strive toward it. It's like the cliche dorm poster (which I hope is in the public domain sinced I don't remember the author), but it's true;
God grant me the courage to change what I can,
The peace to accept what I cannot change,
And the wisdom to know the difference
I find it so sad to see people trying to change things they can't, like other people. Or, to see them accepting situations they could extricate themselves from.
Even the most seemingly powerful among us stand helpless to many things and even those that seem the weakest do have power in their lives if they choose to exercise it. We all answer to God. As Dylan said "You gotta serve somebody". The externals we see are meaningless compared to the inner workings of people, who face death and sadness and joy and love and confusion and choice with compassion or selfishness or awareness or obliviousness. That's what was on view for us in these films and we can see the same attitudes and choices in those around us, it's just a bit harder to make out without the starkness of life and death staring us in the face.
It's a big wide world out there, if the fishy sharks don't eat ya, the human ones will. Make peace with the fact that no matter what the life around you, it is filled with dangers, like all others, and it is up to you and you alone to make your life filled with learning and loving. Focus on the experience of your life, your real life, as you live it, and yet, vision the direction you want to go, when you can.
And, last lesson here, face your fears head on. Those cast adrift had to. You can probably ignore yours, most of us just avoid things that challenge or scare us. I guess everyone fears change to some degree. But, if you can't strip away the padding and face your fears, you're dodging your own life and power. You're on the run. You shouldn't need a catastrophe to address your own life, but, that is too frequently the case. It's often not till we face our own, or a loved ones, mortality that most of us test our mettle and learn those hard lessons, figure out what life is really about. By then it's often too late to make our lives what we would have wanted them to be. This is not a dress rehearsal. It is your life. Live it! While you can.
Open Water is a great DVD, with lots of info about indie filmaking, and I'll also discuss Touching the Void, which I saw this summer. Open Water is made by a scuba diving/filmaking plus full-time job/young kid couple, who, god help them, deserve every success, about a young scuba-diving couple who get left behind a dive boat in, you guessed it...open water. It is based on an actual incident. Touching the Void was made about two men who ran into trouble decending a Chilean peak, and the DVD features their own interviews as well as re-enactments of their ordeal.
Both real incidents, but, no reality TV here, yet. All dialogue is scripted. Although some of the comments in Void were true, like "Simon, Simon...where are you??" In the all male Void, one guy literally cuts off the dangling "friend" to fall through a chasm in the mountain. They both somehow soldier on to survival, but the real world lambasts the cutter. Out in the Open we have the loving but late couple hanging out in the ocean doing, saying, thinking amazingly little except wonder where the sharks and boats are. Needless to say, the girl blames the guy, he gets munched by sharks and who knows if someone will come rescue her in time. Too many metaphors!
We often find ourselves stripped down to our essentials, facing nothing but fear, uncertainty, your god and yourself. I have definitely found this in nature, spending weeks at a time in very sparsely populated terrain, and I've gone days at a time seeing no people at all, just nature. It is a very risky thing to do and was particularly risky for me in a beat up old car, not even checking in with people, no cell phone or GPS in the 80's. And, unlike those in the movies, and most sane people, I often travelled alone. I felt God would take care of me, and, we were close. But I must have been extremely lucky, too.
But again, it's not just when you're voluntarily or involuntarily alone, or injured, or lost in nature (I've been both of those too, definitely not fun). I think people encounter the solitary nature of their strength & soul & connection to God in many ways throughout their lives... if they choose to do so and allow that in their lives. I think I prune down every seven years or so, go through a major life change, meaning, basically, I have lost people and pretty padding from my life, and that has promted much growth, and the addition of wonderful new people and lessons. But, pruning is cutting, it hurts.
I think the lesson we should take from these films, other than respect nature and connect yourself to God, is - how to choose our paths in life, make decisions that will lead to our true growth and happiness. The two films highlight two routes, based on differing circumstances relative to choice and control. On the mountain, the guys, if they just kept moving, could at least see which way was down. Direction was clear, the only issue was whether they could move through the pain. Real life rarely offers such clear direction.
In the open water, there really was nothing they could do. The only boats were very far and current was pulling them. Talk about afloat. They had each other, and their love., but no clear direction. In their case it was more about how to accept their fate than fight it, or strive toward it. It's like the cliche dorm poster (which I hope is in the public domain sinced I don't remember the author), but it's true;
God grant me the courage to change what I can,
The peace to accept what I cannot change,
And the wisdom to know the difference
I find it so sad to see people trying to change things they can't, like other people. Or, to see them accepting situations they could extricate themselves from.
Even the most seemingly powerful among us stand helpless to many things and even those that seem the weakest do have power in their lives if they choose to exercise it. We all answer to God. As Dylan said "You gotta serve somebody". The externals we see are meaningless compared to the inner workings of people, who face death and sadness and joy and love and confusion and choice with compassion or selfishness or awareness or obliviousness. That's what was on view for us in these films and we can see the same attitudes and choices in those around us, it's just a bit harder to make out without the starkness of life and death staring us in the face.
It's a big wide world out there, if the fishy sharks don't eat ya, the human ones will. Make peace with the fact that no matter what the life around you, it is filled with dangers, like all others, and it is up to you and you alone to make your life filled with learning and loving. Focus on the experience of your life, your real life, as you live it, and yet, vision the direction you want to go, when you can.
And, last lesson here, face your fears head on. Those cast adrift had to. You can probably ignore yours, most of us just avoid things that challenge or scare us. I guess everyone fears change to some degree. But, if you can't strip away the padding and face your fears, you're dodging your own life and power. You're on the run. You shouldn't need a catastrophe to address your own life, but, that is too frequently the case. It's often not till we face our own, or a loved ones, mortality that most of us test our mettle and learn those hard lessons, figure out what life is really about. By then it's often too late to make our lives what we would have wanted them to be. This is not a dress rehearsal. It is your life. Live it! While you can.
posted by Intervision at 7:54 AM
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