Category: Uncategorized

The Movie Lamb and Reflections on Grief

I just finished watching the movie Lamb. I had been wanting to see it for a while because it looked interesting, but I was at first put off because it was categorized as a horror movie, and I normally don’t like horror movies. I was pretty nervous about watching it because a huge reason I don’t watch horror is because I cannot deal with jump scares. Just something about stuff jumping out at you, especially if it’s a creepy doll or possessed supernatural force, just does not sit with me at all. In fact, I commend any of my friends who can sit through movies like Candyman and Child’s Play because I don’t think I would be brave enough to watch those movies. But I read more about the movie and people said there weren’t any jump scares, but that it was just disturbing. After reading the reviews and the parent’s guides, however, I finally just realized that I wouldn’t actually know whether I liked the movie (or could sit through it without screaming my head off in fear) until I actually watched it.

To be honest, the people who watched the movie were right. There were no jump scares. And I think because there are no jump scares, this is one of those movies that you really have to get into. And I was pretty into it. The only reason I had to keep getting up is because we are getting ready for the holidays and I was trying to get my room organized and do other stuff, but to be honest, this is one of those movies you really need to pay close attention to because there is mostly a lot of nonverbal communication. I think it was more sad than scary to be honest. I really didn’t think it was scary, but it was pretty unsettling. I think the last twenty minutes were pretty disturbing. I kept closing my eyes, thinking something was going to jump out on the screen, but to be honest closing my eyes every five seconds with my heart racing, thinking, Something’s going to jump out, pretty much ruined my first viewing of this film. I think I would need to watch it again because while closing my eyes and anticipating jump scares, I missed out on enjoying the actual experience of watching this movie. I wouldn’t mind watching it again though, because there were definitely some parts I missed or didn’t quite understand about the plot. I think reading the Wikipedia plot after seeing the film is helping me process and understand parts that I missed.

If you haven’t seen Lamb it is about a couple named Maria and Ingvar living in rural Iceland who don’t have any children of their own, but they help birth one of the babies of their sheep and they end up taking the sheep’s child as their own child. At first things are going well. They name the child Ada and take her for walks and play with her and treat her like any human baby (Ada is born half human, half lamb). However, their parenting comes at a steep price. Maria kills Ada’s mother when Ada’s mother won’t stop bleating for her child at the window (honestly, until it was mentioned later in the film, I totally didn’t realize that Maria had killed Ada’s mother. But then again, they were all sheep so I couldn’t really tell who was who) Maria constantly pushes Ada’s mother away when Ada’s mother is clearly calling for her child back, until finally she snaps and just kills her. Honestly this part was really hard to watch, even before I realized that the sheep was Ada’s biological mother. Maria and Ingvar continue to take care of Ada without Ada knowing Maria killed her mother, and then things take a turn when Petur, who is Ingvar’s brother, comes to stay with them. Not only doesn’t Petur make sexual advances towards Maria, but he also questions whether Maria and Ingvar should be keeping Ada. Looking back, at first I was skeptical about his skepticism, but after thinking about what happens at the end of the film, it made sense that he was pretty suspicious. Maria and Ingvar act like nothing bad is going to happen, and Maria, Ingvar and Petur get drunk one day while watching a sports game and start dancing around the room. Ada is probably super overstimulated by all their yelling and drunken-ness, so she leaves the room and she goes outside. She sees the dog whimpering and hears heavy breathing and sees an unknown entity before her (they don’t show who it is yet) and the entity kills the dog off screen. Ada, Maria and Petur are still oblivious, and Petur continues to try and kiss Maria, and she finally locks him in a closet so he won’t get to her anymore, loudly playing classical music on the piano to drown out his yells. The next day, Maria takes Petur to the bus stop so he can leave, and meanwhile Ingvar takes Ada for a walk, not knowing that his life will change forever, and not in a good way. The entity, who is a ram human hybrid and the biological father of Ada, kills Ingvar with his shotgun and takes away Ada. Ada is really sad when Ingvar dies, but she has no choice but to go with her biological father. They leave, and when Maria arrives it is too late and Ingvar dies right before her eyes. She is literally alone with her grief.

Grief and the influence it has on our lives is a huge theme of this movie. While thinking about the film, I thought about this painting I saw in Brene Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart, in which she breaks down and explains a wide range of different feelings and emotions we have in certain situations, such as belonging, joy, and anxiety. One of these is called anguish, and on page 90 she shows a painting by August Friedrich Albrecht Schneck called Anguish, which depicts a mother sheep grieving the loss of her dead lamb child, while surrounded by a group of crows. Honestly when I first saw that painting I was pretty emotional, not just because I am a huge lover of animals but because anguish and grief are very real and very painful experiences. I am not sure whether Ada ever found out that Maria killed her mother, or whether Ada’s biological father even knows either. I’m sure the movie left that up to interpretation. But that painting showed me that animals experience emotions like us, and that they’re not just these dumb unfeeling creatures. I think as I processed the film, at first I didn’t know what was going on with the sheep bleating out the window at Ada all the time, but then Petur tells Maria that if she doesn’t let him hit on her, he will tell Ada that Maria killed Ada’s mother, and that’s when I realized, Oh, shit. That was Ada’s mother. That must have been pretty painful for Ada to be so young and yet lose her mother like that. I looked up more about the Anguish painting, and there is a 1885 version in which, instead of the mother sheep grieving her young’s death, the young sheep grieves over his mother’s dead body, surrounded by the same crows.

Full credit: p. 90, Atlas of the Heart: Brene Brown. Anguish (Angoisse) (c. 1878) by August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased 1880.

Both of these versions left my heart feeling incredibly heavy. Losing one’s parents, child or any other loved one is an incredibly painful experience, no matter how one processes grief or expresses their grief. I just think about The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin because in many of his letters he talks about grief and losing loved ones, because many of his followers dealt with the loss of their loved ones. He encourages them to continue practicing Buddhism and overcome their challenges, but he also acknowledges that grief is a human experience and is also incredibly painful, even for the most stoic of people. To be honest, I am getting pretty emotional writing about this and thinking about the Anguish painting and the film because losing people you love really does hurt, and while Ada grieved over her adoptive father (Ingvar’s) death, I wonder how she is going to be able to process learning about her mother’s death as she grows up in the future, or whether she is going to go through life not knowing that her mother got killed. It was painful for me to watch Maria grieve over her husband, Ingvar’s death, but in a way, her grief was connected to Ada’s biological mother’s grief, even if Maria just thought Ada’s mom was just some annoying dumb animal who kept making loud bleating noises at the window. Of course, I may be overthinking it. After all, these people lived on a farm, probably hours from a grocery store, and they had to get their lamb chops from somewhere (I’m saying this as someone who has been a lifelong animal lover and a vegan for fifteen years). But it is still painful because Ada’s mom’s grief at not getting her child back was not really any different from Maria’s grief at losing Ada (and Ingvar.) In the book Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown describes the feeling of anguish in a way that just ripped at my heart strings (“anguish is an almost unbearable and traumatic swirl of shock, incredulity, grief and powerlessness.” Brown 91)

She also explains that anguish can be physically tormenting as well. When we experience anguish, we have trouble breathing, focusing, really doing anything, and it can literally make us sink into the ground. I remember when my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, passed away. It was November 18, and my mother was going to write to him. She had worked so hard on this letter the night before, and I remember the morning I checked my phone and found on the WhatApp group the news from other SGI members about his passing, I couldn’t breathe, my heart raced and I literally felt I could not do anything. Walk, get up, go to the bathroom. Nothing. I felt a huge stone thud in my body, and my head spun and I began to feel my life was no longer in my control. Now of course you will say, Hold up. Was it really that painful? Yes. It was, reader. It very much was. I woke up to do my morning chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to my Buddhist altar, the Gohonzon, and my dad walked in and told me with a pained expression he found out the news about Daisaku Ikeda’s passing, too. My mother was going to sleep in, and I was anxiously wondering what to tell her, because I was still very much in shock, too. When we finally told her that morning, she froze, and her lips trembled and she leaned down and her body racked with sobs. She retrieved the letter she was going to send to Mr. Ikeda and read to us aloud, and as she read, she clutched her mouth to hold back the sobs as tears streamed down her cheeks and she felt like she was going to collapse. My father and I cried with her. We just were in such shock. We knew he was 95. But it was still deeply painful. We scheduled a chanting session at the Buddhist center and everyone came and was deeply pained. I remember the next morning before going to the center for my Byakuren shift reading Daisaku Ikeda’s encouragement, and still in shock, collapsing on top of the kitchen counter and emitting loud long wails as tears racked my body and I lost control of my expression of grief. My mother rubbed my shoulders as I was completely beside myself. I then went to the restroom and my shoulders heaved and heaved and I just could not stop crying. I collapses physically and I felt I wasn’t actually going to make it to the center that day. Even after I wiped my tears, the grief was still very much present, not just with me but with everyone who came to the center that day. The anguish everyone felt over the passing of our mentor was painful to witness and experience, and I remember feeling so alone in my grief until I remembered that everyone was still grappling with his passing and that grief is not something you can just rush through or push under the rug. Of course, you don’t have to let it consume you, but I have learned that everyone processes grief differently and there is no arbitrary time table for people to grieve.

I think watching movies during this time of grief has been a reminder that grief is a human experience and that I shouldn’t feel like I am going through it alone. The other day, I watched The Crown season 6 and it shows the grief that Charles experiences when he finds out that his ex-wife, Diana, died in a car crash in Paris. When he sees her body during the autopsy, he experiences serious anguish and he sees Diana in a vision as if she was still alive, and what she tells him fills him with deep regret at the way he treated her for so many years. Even after he was talking about how happy he was with Camila, Diana still had a profound impact on his life and so it was painful and shocking to find out about her death. Dodi’s dad, Mohamed Al-Fayed (who actually passed away this year) also experiences profound grief when he learns Dodi died with Diana in the car crash. At the funeral for Dodi he is in so much emotional pain and wails in anguish when he goes into the examining room and sees his son’s body after the autopsy. Mohamed also imagines Dodi talking to him, saying how he failed his father, and he breaks down and tells Dodi before he disappears that he didn’t fail him and that he really misses him. This showed me that even though Diana had a complicated and destructive marriage where Charles didn’t value or respect her, and even though Dodi had a relationship with his father where his father placed heavy expectations on him and demeaned him if he failed to meet those expectations, at the end of the day, the grief Charles and Mohamed both experienced reminded them of how much they actually loved the people they lost and how painful it was to lose the people you love.

Movie Review: The Intern (2015)

Last week, while on break, I walked into the room and started watching TV and I came across this movie called The Intern. I had briefly heard about it but had not known anything else about it, hadn’t even seen the movie trailer. Honestly it was a really excellent movie, and it has a really heartfelt message. It is about a 70 year old widower named Ben Whitaker who lives in New York City and is happily retired but who is trying to find his purpose in life. He has tried everything: learning Mandarin, taking classes, doing tai-chi, but he is still wondering what else to do. While walking down the street he sees a flier advertising an internship program at a fashion agency for people 65 years of age and older. He decides to send in his application, which is a video cover letter (because as the ad says, traditional cover letters are so old school) and he gets an interview for the job. When Ben gets the job, he is assigned to the owner of the company, Jules Ostin (played brilliantly by Anne Hathaway, who was in another workplace comedy-drama called The Devil Wears Prada, only she was the assistant to a mean boss.) Jules is not great with elderly people and she is also super swamped with trying to run the company and also manage her family life. Ben is eager to start working immediately, and they assign him to work directly under Jules. However, Jules is not excited about working with Ben and doesn’t give him any work to do even when she tells him she will email him work to do. However, what this movie showed me is that when you are not given anything to do, sometimes you need to take the initiative yourself, and when you take the initiative you gain people’s trust. Ben shows that he is willing to put in the work, and one crucial thing he does on the job during his first few weeks is help one of the employees roll a cart of stuff through the office since she is having trouble rolling it. When Jules sees him humbly doing this for the employee, she takes note but she also still doesn’t give him much to do. However, when she arrives to work one morning she finds that this big pile of papers, junk and other stuff that was just lying in an area of the office is magically gone, and the desk where people dumped the stuff is suddenly neat. Jules wonders who did it, and her other coworkers tell her that Ben arrived early in the morning to organize the desk. Ben in his personal life is also a very organized person. He keeps his suits, his pants, his ties and his undergarments very well organized. (I was getting serious Marie Kondo vibes, and all I could think was, I need to do a serious Ben Whittaker/ Marie Kondo cleanup of my room.) They ring a bell every time something good happens at the company (getting a record number of Instagram likes, etc.) and someone rings the bell and announces Ben cleared the desk, and everyone claps and cheers. Ben is appreciative, but he is also humble, and I think I learned from Ben to always have that humble spirit and keep making sincere efforts to try and do good work even if you think people don’t see it. I think it’s a good lesson for me to learn because it’s easy for me to feel like I’m not being recognized or that my work doesn’t matter, but when people remind me how important my work is, I feel good. But I’ve also learned I need to also take ownership of my work as well and I think doing this has helped me gain more confidence in myself when I recognize that I am doing my best each day. It hasn’t been easy to do this but it is something I am still working on.

When Jules sees Ben is truly making a sincere effort in the workplace, she finds he is also helpful in many other areas of her life as well. One day she gets soy sauce on her suit jacket, and Becky, her very stressed and burned out assistant, alerts him to it. He humbly takes the jacket to get cleaned, and then he finds out of the corner of his eye when looking out the window that Jules’ personal driver is drinking alcohol before he is scheduled to drive Jules. Jules is about to go down to meet the driver, but Ben goes down to talk to the driver and he politely tells the driver that it would not be safe for him to drive Jules after he has been drinking alcohol, and he should just tell Jules he needs to call out for the day since he doesn’t feel well. The driver listens to him, and Jules lets Ben drive her to her destination. She ends up letting Ben drive her the rest of the time, and they end up developing a very special bond. However, Jules is not comfortable with this at first. She is always working and never makes time for herself, even to spend time with her husband, Matt, and young daughter, Paige. Matt is a stay at home dad who spends a lot of time with Paige, but he never gets to spend time with his wife because she is working all the time. Something about Ben makes her feel calm because he always puts her at ease with his calm presence. He never fusses nor complains about how stressed he is. He shows up and does his job, and she realizes that is all she wants is someone who can show up and take the initiative to get the job done. Without Ben knowing she orders Ben to be transferred to another department because she is suspicious about his intentions, and she doesn’t think people will take her seriously, but one day she gets in the car and finds another intern, not Ben, is driving her (the lady ends up almost crashing into a car and Jules ends up driving herself) and she goes into the office and Cameron, her VP, informs her that like she emailed, her request to transfer Ben was completed. She rushes over to a coffee shop, where she finds Ben getting coffees to take back to the office, and she apologizes and tells him that she is not used to being around someone with Ben’s calm centered down to earth personality, and she could really use his help. Ben doesn’t give her a hard time, and tells her he would be happy to work for her again. She regains his trust and this helps in much deeper situations, namely when Ben finds out that Matt is cheating on Jules. Jules reveals later to Ben that she knew he was cheating and she is fearful that if she leaves Matt she will end up alone. She is holding out hope for them to stay together, but Ben is very honest with her and tells her she needs to do what makes her happy. Jules is on a trip in San Francisco to meet with a CEO because Cameron is telling her she is doing too much, and it would help to have someone else run the company. However, this is a frightening prospect to Jules because this company is Jules’ baby. She nurtured it from start to finish, and she feels she needs to handle everything rather than ask for help in hopes of keeping the company running. However, Ben is teaching her that she needs to ask for help and that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. When Jules learns this, she learns that some other people on the team also need help as well, in particular her assistant, Becky, who is swamped with work and works 12 hours a day under all these high stress situations. Jules never acknowledged how hard Becky was working, but then Ben shows her that to keep people feeling okay about working somewhere, you need to make them feel appreciated and valued and respected. Becky has a business degree and has a valuable skillset but Jules up until then never acknowledged it, until Ben tells Jules that Becky has so much potential, especially because she helped him on a project that Jules needed help on.

The movie doesn’t talk too heavily about grief, but it is significant that the main character is a widower. He also goes to a lot of funerals. Even though I am still young, I have attended many memorial services and funerals for many of my older friends who have passed away. I am not going to lie, grief is very painful. After one of my friends passed away in April, I really didn’t know how I was going to go on with my life. She was truly a treasure and for a 20-something who was depressed and suicidal at the time, she really gave me hope that life had a great purpose and that I could become happy even when I was going through painful difficulties. I didn’t have to wait until later in life to become happy. Losing a lot of the older members in my Buddhist community has been a serious journey of healing and learning to heal from loss, but I can look back with appreciation for all of the memories I shared with my friends in the community. They really showed me that life itself is a source of joy and that I have a lot more to be thankful for than I think I do. I think studying about life and death from a Buddhist perspective has helped me create meaning from life even when I felt it was no longer worth living at times because I was going through so much painful suffering. And I think seeing the vibrant lives of so many of the older members of my Buddhist community reminded me that the pain, heartbreak, disappointment, anxiety and other stuff I was going through in my 20s was not forever, and that there was hope for me. It also showed me that it helps to have a purpose in life and meaningful relationships with people in the process of healing from loss. Ben meets a wonderful woman named Fiona, who is a masseuse at his workplace. They strike up a conversation and they end up dating and falling in love. She, like him, is an older woman and they develop a meaningful bond with each other. Ben also develops a meaningful friendship with Jules, and teaches her a lot of life lessons. He also learns from her with so much humility and grace, and even when she has to make the difficult decision about whether to move to San Francisco or not in order to leave Matt, Ben fully supports Jules in her decision because he wants her to be happy, and when he reminds Matt of this one night, Matt self-reflects and realizes what he did was wrong, and it takes a lot of courage for him to confront Jules about his cheating and tell her that he will do better.

I need to get some sleep but 0verall, this was an excellent movie. I really recommend watching it. There are also some funny moments as well, like when Ben and his coworkers have to break into Jules’ mom’s house and delete a nasty email Jules accidentally sent to her mom. The scene where Adam Devine’s character is jamming to Busta Rhymes in the car was hilarious! Overall, excellent movie.

TV Series Review: The English Game

written during Thanksgiving break

So last evening my family and I finished the first part of season 6 of The Crown. And I was just craving another period drama, and I remembered after finishing Ted Lasso, I looked up shows that were similar to it, and there was a list of shows and one of them was The English Game. This is one of the few TV shows or movies that I walked into without knowing anything about the plot or characters. I just remembered that Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, created this show and I was all for it, because Downton Abbey is one of my favorite shows.

The English Game takes place in the 19th century in London, and a team of football players named The Etonians are upper class and members of the Football Association. They have credentials, influence and, above all, money. However, there are a group of paper mill workers in the working class community of Darwen who also play football, and two players from Scotland, Fergus and Jimmy, arrive in England ready to play because the cotton mill owner, James, recruits them to play so the team can win the FA Cup. However, the Old Etonians are unwilling to let these people play because they are poor and the Etonians want only rich people to play. Arthur is the leader of the Etonians and he comes face to face with Fergus, who just wants a shot at accomplishing his dreams of being a footballer. One of the messages I learned about this miniseries is that perseverance is key if you want to follow your dreams, and if you really want to follow your dreams you have to push past the rejection, the humiliation, and the criticisms from others. Fergus learns how to not give up on himself even when the going gets rough, especially in one crucial scene where James and the Cotton Club members propose wage cuts for all the workers at the cotton mills. It also puts a strain on Fergus’s teammates when they find out that Fergus and Jimmy are the only footballers on the Darwen team who are being paid to play.

The show in some ways reminded me a lot of Ted Lasso. In a later season of Ted Lasso, one of the star players on the AFC Richmond team, Sam Obisanya, is almost recruited by Edwin Akufo, who is a multimillionaire who wants Sam to play on Nigeria’s team. He bribes Sam with all sorts of material wealthy things. He even has authentic Nigerian food catered to Sam. He wants to make money off of Sam, but Sam is loyal to AFC Richmond, so he turns down the offer. Edwin gets really upset and tears Sam down, but Sam is confident in himself so he isn’t swayed by Edwin’s insults. It reminded me of The English Game a little because Fergus needs to make a tough decision whether to join John Cartwright’s team, Blackburn, or stay with the Darwen team. Even though Cartwright promises him better benefits if he goes to their team, it puts a strain on his relationships with his Darwen teammates because not only are Jimmy and Fergus getting paid to play (they weren’t supposed to get paid to play football as a rule) but they go to the rival team. When Fergus and Jimmy go to the pub to hang out, their teammates get upset and tell them to leave since they betrayed them. But after Jimmy gets injured (just a warning, the scene where you see Jimmy’s injury is pretty graphic. I didn’t see it coming though because I didn’t read much about the show before watching it) his teammates began to have more sympathy for him, and gradually Fergus regains trust with his Darwen teammates when they realize that he wasn’t going to put on airs just because he went on the Blackburn team. It also reminded me of another moment in Ted Lasso, when Nathan Shelly, who was the kit-boy on AFC Richmond’s team, was recruited by Rebecca’s ex-husband, Rupert Mannion, to join the Manchester team. After a lot of self-actualization and realizing that Rupert is not a great guy to work with, he begs the AFC Richmond team to let him back on the team again. They let him back on, but they also let him know how egotistical he acted. I think Nathan realized that he really did love AFC Richmond and felt more at home there than he did on the Manchester team.

I love the romance between Fergus and Martha Almond, as well as the romance between Jimmy and Doris. When Fergus meets Martha she doesn’t warm up to him at first because she also has a young daughter she needs to protect and she doesn’t trust anyone to help her. However, as Fergus and Martha get to know each other, they develop a deep love for one another. Jimmy and Doris hit it off really well, and they get married. Fergus tells Jimmy to focus on football, but he is so overjoyed at getting married and Fergus realizes he wants Jimmy to be happy. Fergus also realizes he really loves Martha and wants to be more than friends, but we find out that Martha was in a relationship with Mr. Cartwright, the owner of the Blackburn team that Fergus is joining, and her daughter is technically Mr. Cartwright’s kid. Mr. Cartwright wants Martha to forgive him and still wants her to love him, but that also puts a strain on his marriage. Martha encourages Fergus to persevere and not give up on himself, and they develop an incredible bond together.

I also found a lot of similarities between the show and other stuff I have watched and read. There is a character named Alma, and she is married to Arthur, who runs the Etonian football team and is on the football association board. Alma suffers a miscarriage and it seems like she has nothing left to live for because she was really looking forward to becoming a mother, but then she goes to a women’s refuge called Brockshall, and she finds herself helping out Betsy, a young woman who works with Martha but got fired from her job. Betsy has her baby, but Mrs. Cartwright, who runs the refuge, gives the baby away to an adoption agency. Alma digs at her for this information, and after a lot of teeth pulling, Mrs. Cartwright finally gives her the book with the list of children given away for adoption. Alma does everything in her power to get Betsy’s baby back, and she goes to the adoption agency herself and takes the baby away. The woman at the agency fights her, but Alma’s husband, Arthur, stops the woman and lets Alma leave with Betsy’s baby so she can give her back to Betsy. It reminded me of this movie I watched a while ago called True Mothers, a Japanese language film about a couple who adopt a child after being unable to conceive, and their later confrontation with the young mother who wants her son back from the couple. Like in The English Game, the women whose babies are taken to the agency are mostly born out of wedlock or from unwanted pregnancies, and during the 19th century there was a lot of shame and judgment associated with a woman being pregnant if she was unmarried. It reminded me, too, of the judgment Ethel encountered in the show Downton Abbey. Ethel meets a soldier named Charles Bryant when he is staying at Downton during the war, and she becomes pregnant with his child. She faces a lot of shame and stigma for having a child out of wedlock and she has to give up the child to Charles’ parents, who do not respect her.

What this movie showed me was the spirit to persevere is so important. Fergus faced a lot of challenges when competing against Arthur and the other Etonians. He and his team didn’t have as much status or wealth as they did, and they also faced financial challenges and unemployment. However, Fergus had to overcome his own self-doubt and fears in order to help lead the team to victory. He also learned that it’s okay to accept help from others, and that even though he faced a lot of painful moments in his past (his father is an alcoholic who abuses his mom and sisters) he overcame each hurdle after another. Arthur also realized that he wanted to make football accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. I think helping Alma get Betsy her baby back may have given him a sense of purpose outside of his work or what his father expected of him. Arthur’s dad set a lot of expectations for his son, and became disappointed when he didn’t meet those expectations, but Arthur realized through working together with Fergus that football really did bring him happiness and wasn’t just something he did just to make himself look good for others.

This was overall a really good show. And the music was absolutely amazing. I found myself listening to the Downton Abbey soundtrack quite a lot these past few weeks. It just has so much incredible music and it is absolutely beautiful. Just like Downton Abbey, The English Game has amazing music as well. The music kind of reminded me of The Crown‘s music score because it sounded intense and had a somber tone, which I think was appropriate considering it was a drama. I didn’t know most of the actors in The English Game, I only knew a couple of the actors, and one was Daniel Ings because he played Prince Philip’s secretary Mike in seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown. At first it was hard to recognize him because Mike doesn’t wear a beard in The Crown, but he does when he plays the role of Francis Marindin, who was on the football board and on the Eton team in The English Game. Another actor I recognized was Kate Phillips, the actress who played Venetia Scott, Winston Churchill’s secretary, in season 1 of The Crown. She played Laura Lyttelton, the wife of one of Arthur’s close friends, and she is also Alma’s friend.

The Crown part 1 season 6 (contains spoilers)

I had really been anticipating season 6 of The Crown, a really good show on Netflix I am watching right now. To be honest, this season was pretty sad. But I think watching it kind of helped me process my own grief this week after my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, passed away this past week. Daisaku Ikeda’s encouragement really touched my life, and he was a peacebuilder and writer whose works really encouraged me, so this week after finding out he died was very painful. This first part of The Crown deals with grief and the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, and so watching this helped me to process my own grief. I felt a lot less like I was going through this alone, and watching these episodes reminded me that grief is a universal experience and it is indeed painful to go through for everyone.

I feel bad for putting spoilers in this post but at the same time, I understand that Princess Diana’s death was very real and very painful for everyone, and while I would learn about her in history or world geography class, seeing Elizabeth Debicki embody Diana’s character so well really made me feel as if I was meeting Diana. Elizabeth is an incredible actress and I really loved her in Widows, and she is also an excellent actress in The Crown. I think when everyone was grieving Diana’s death, I think it was really sad to watch, and it showed how Diana really touched everyone’s lives, even her ex-husband, Charles. And it was also painful to watch Dodi Fayed’s father grieving because that was his only child and even though he set these high expectations for Dodi and got really disappointed when Dodi didn’t meet his expectations, he still loved his son. It was really powerful when they showed Charles imagining a dialogue between him and Diana, and then Dodi’s dad imagining him talking with Dodi. Dodi in the imagined conversation tells his dad that he failed him so many times and didn’t meet his expectations. Dodi’s father wanted Dodi to get married to Diana but it was really driven by his pursuit of wanting to become a British citizen. In the earlier episodes of season 5, Dodi’s father, as a child, encounters the abdicated Edward and his wife, Wallis Simpson, and he aspires to be British. However, he has incredibly high expectations for his son to do what he tells him to do, and Dodi is always trying to seek approval from his father. I think that is why he hangs up on his dad before telling him that he and Diana didn’t actually seal the deal on getting married because he feared his father’s disapproval. If Dodi actually told his father that Diana didn’t want to marry him, then Dodi’s father would cut him off from his fortune and basically disown his son. The imagined conversation between Dodi and his father really showed how the father regretted making his son feel poorly about himself, like he failed his father. It seems that approval seeking is a huge pattern in a lot of these relationships depicted in the show. Prince Charles wants his mom’s approval and when he speaks out for the self-determination of the people of Wales, she reprimands him for doing so. When he says he was just expressing an opinion, she shuts him down and tells him no one wants to hear his opinion. Of course, I’m sure the backstory of all this was much more complex, but as someone who has spent most of my life wanting to seek approval and reading more books about it and learning how to work on not seeking validation all the time (which is still a work in progress) it was pretty painful to see how most of the characters’ lives were based on seeking external validation. But of course, I have to remember that the royal family probably didn’t have a choice because they were in the public eye all of the time.

I think watching the scene with all the paparazzi chasing Diana was pretty sad, too. I used to think it was so glamorous to see celebrities’ photos of them taking their kids to school, eating ice cream, kissing their partners. It all seemed like these actors, musicians and other famous people were these gods or deities. I think as I grew older and started seeing more clearly what Hollywood is really like, though, I have learned that celebrities are human beings just like me. And it’s pretty stressful for a lot of them to be going about their daily lives and have someone take a photo of them and splash it all over the papers. When I went to Los Angeles, I thought, I’m going to meet all these celebrities and it’s going to be so cool! But I didn’t, and I think after reflecting on it, it was best to just let these regular ass people live their regular ass lives. I think that is why while watching the show it was so emotionally painful to see Diana being chased by the people taking the photos. They just wouldn’t give her a break, and even when Dodi and her went to get ice cream, people hounded them for photos, so much so that they had to hide in a jewelry store. Even when they go in the restaurant they set up a reservation to dine at, the people around them just stare at them and they can’t just eat in private. Diana breaks down crying because it is really stressful that she just can’t enjoy her meal with Dodi without people following her and asking her personal questions.

And it was really profound when she told Dodi that motherhood brought her the greatest joy, and it’s why I felt really sad when she died because from watching the show it was clear that she really loved her sons and they also did everything they could to make sure their mom was happy and enjoying her life even when she was dealing with these really toxic dynamics in the royal family and not having her privacy respected. In this season she goes to Bosnia to support a charity that raises awareness of landmines and how the victims of landmine explosions often go unnoticed. In the earlier seasons I saw Diana supporting many charities and organizations, and she also treated people with the utmost respect. I think that is why watching the footage that shows the thousands of flower bouquets that people dedicated to Diana really hit like a gut punch because it showed me how Diana truly touched many people’s lives. She actually wanted to go out there and be with the people.

How I manage my screen time

I saw this as the WordPress daily prompt, and it immediately resonated with me. Managing my screen time is something I have been challenging for a while, even before I got my first smart phone in 2016. Even before I got a smartphone I was always spending time on YouTube, and while it provided a respite from loneliness I felt in school, it cut into a lot of my sleep time and study time. I haven’t learned to manage my computer time yet, but I’m starting with monitoring how much time I spend on my cell phone. I use the Digital Well Being app on my phone to mark how much time I have spent and it also categorizes the time I spent on different apps, such as YouTube, text messages and email. I usually write down how much screen time I spend each day, and while it’s still a work in progress for me to not just grab my cell phone and scroll the news or YouTube, being aware of how I am using my phone and for how much is a small step that I’m taking to make sure I do other activities outside of looking at my phone all day. Although I do use YouTube to watch movies and exercise because there are a lot of great exercise videos. I also listen to music on YouTube. I can’t completely cut myself off the grid right now, that would be pretty tough. I tried in college. I cut my phone off pretty frequently and my family couldn’t reach me no matter how many times they called. I am slowly learning how to communicate better and more frequently. It is still a work in progress though. I think keeping track of my phone use has been beneficial. I think I started doing it more after reading How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price and listening to Catherine Price do a podcast episode with Vivek Murthy about phone use.

Music Playlist for the Week

  • Leave Me Alone: Michael Jackson
  • Leave Before You Love Me: Marshmello and Jonas Brothers
  • What’s It Gonna Be?- Janet Jackson and Busta Rhymes
  • Stranger in Moscow: Michael Jackson
  • Trouble: Iggy Azalea and Jennifer Hudson
  • Beautiful: Snoop Dogg and Pharrell
  • Ballin’: Snoop Dogg and The Dramatics
  • I’m a Slave 4 U: Britney Spears
  • Just Friends: Musiq Soulchild
  • When We Get By: D’Angelo
  • Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song is About You): Janet Jackson
  • Love from the Other Side: Fall Out Boy
  • I Am Here: P!nk
  • Drink You Away: Justin Timberlake
  • Really Don’t Care: Demi Lovato and Cher Lloyd
  • Through the Dark: KT Tunstall
  • Longview: Green Day
  • Issues (Hold On): Teyana Taylor
  • Beautiful: Tweet
  • Talkin’ To Me: Amerie
  • Jojo: Boz Scaggs
  • That Don’t Impress Me Much (Dance Mix): Shania Twain
  • My Vision: Seal
  • Colour: Seal
  • Under the Weather: KT Tunstall
  • Human Beings: Seal
  • Princess of China: Coldplay
  • Na Na: Trey Songz
  • Trouble: P!nk
  • Southern Nights: Glen Campbell
  • Flashing Lights: Ye (Kanye West)
  • Think: The Blues Brothers, Aretha Franklin
  • Love Can Move Mountains: Celine Dion
  • Team: LORDE
  • Are You Gonna Be My Girl?- Jet
  • A Woman’s Worth: Alicia Keys
  • Ring (feat. Kehlani): Cardi B
  • Take a Walk: Raphael Saadiq
  • I Believe to My Soul: Donny Hathaway
  • Here You Come Again: Dolly Parton
  • Centuries: Fall Out Boy
  • High Hopes: Panic! At the Disco
  • Swearin’ To God: Frankie Valli
  • Stubborn Kind of Fellow: Marvin Gaye
  • Club at the End of the Street: Elton John
  • Get Involved: Raphael Saadiq and Q Tip
  • Head: Prince

Movie Review: Waltz with Bashir

Honestly I was ambivalent about watching this movie because I tend to get really squeamish about violence, and I was already watching a lot of images in the news with the Israel-Palestine conflict, so I thought about not seeing it. I spent the last few days looking at parent’s guides for info about any potential violence, language and sex. But to be honest, I am at that age where I know which movies I can tolerate and which I cannot. I will never sit through Five Nights at Freddy’s, but I was willing to watch this because I didn’t know much about the 1982 Lebanon War. I mean, I’m sure I studied about it in my geography and world history classes in high school, but that was a long time ago and because history is constantly repeating itself, I need to study it again and again to understand why the present is happening the way it is. But I think watching movies can also be a tool to understand historical issues from different perspectives, and while I am still processing the entirety of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, watching this film showed me that war is horrific and traumatic for everyone involved.

To be honest, I am not a history expert. I only know about Israel and Palestine from high school and from reading the news, so I at first wasn’t sure if I was even qualified to write this movie review because I still have so much to learn about and I am not well researched about the 1982 Lebanon War. But I will do my best. I am still processing this film though because it was very intense and emotional. I think if I had watched this movie when I was younger I don’t know if I would have been able to handle it, to be honest. But for some reason I was okay with watching this movie at night even though I know deep down that I normally try not to watch upsetting content at night. But that’s the thing about movies. They are not always there to make me comfortable or entertain. Oftentimes movies challenge me to look at history from a different perspective. Also, I’m biased about Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and this film got a 97 percent so I thought, It must have been good. I remember watching the Oscars when I was in middle school, and this movie had been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film was directed by Ari Folman, and the animation was what pretty much drew me to it in the first place. It is masterfully done, and it was a reminder of how animation can serve as powerful social commentary. It reminded me of when I watched the film and read the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which illustrates Marjane’s coming of age during the Iranian Revolution. Or the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, which moved me on so many levels. Honestly this movie reminded me how so much is lost in war. It’s easy for me to soak up the air with my own problems and worries, and of course problems and worries make us human. But when I looked at the news and saw Gaza and so many Palestinian and Israeli citizens suffering, it was hard to look away but also I felt hopeless just looking at those images. When I watched this movie it reminded me that compared to war and bombings that take many people’s lives, my own petty problems are so small. It reminded me that I have to appreciate my life even if I’m not getting everything I want. Because war destroys people’s lives. The movie showed that while Ari created many friendships and connections with people while in the war, every day was a life or death battle for everyone in this war and no one was guaranteed an extra day because any time they were walking down the street someone could get killed. The movie shows how traumatic war is and how it can bring up a lot of painful feelings and experiences. In one scene there is a therapist who talks about disassociation as a defense mechanism, how when people are going through a traumatic experience they often detach themselves from the experience even though they are in the flesh living through a traumatic event. Trauma also impacts how people remember different experiences. One memorable one where he and two other naked men are wading in the water and before them they are watching a city being bombed. They walk towards the light and put their clothes on. They are in survival mode and like I said, when it comes to war it is a life or death battle where you don’t know whether you are guaranteed another day or not because someone could easily take away your life from you. The ending was pretty difficult to watch, especially because it was real imagery from the Lebanon war of actually murdered Palestinians during the massacre.

The movie reminded me of a quote from a book I am reading called The Human Revolution by an author named Daisaku Ikeda, and he recounts his experiences growing up during World War II and how during the aftermath of the war everyone in Japan was struggling to rebuild and regain hope because so many people lost their loved ones and possessions in the war. He opens the book with a short yet profound quote: “Nothing is more barbarous than war. Nothing is more cruel.” Honestly as I was watching Waltz with Bashir, that quote was at the forefront of my mind. It was also a quote I reflected on a lot while watching movies about war in the past, such as 1917. In 1917, these two men fighting in World War I endure harrowing events at pretty much every turn. They go through no man’s land and they are literally in a life or death battle. Even when they are walking through a beautiful field of flowers, they don’t have time to enjoy it because they are living through the trauma of war and the reality that they could get killed at any moment. There is one scene that stuck with me when the two soldiers are walking through an beautiful field of flowers, and they talk about receiving a medal for their service. They conclude that getting a medal would mean nothing because they faced so many cruel realities while in battle and it left them feeling disillusioned and hopeless.

I’m still emotionally processing Waltz with Bashir so I don’t know what else to say, but overall it was a really deep film.

Waltz with Bashir. 2008. Directed by Ari Folman. Rated R for some disturbing images of atrocities, strong violence, brief nudity and a scene of graphic sexual content.

Favorite form of exercise

Lately I’ve been realizing that exercise does wonders for my body. I tend to sit a lot so I’ve been trying to become more active. I love Yoga with Adriene because she has a lot of great videos, and I also love Grow with Jo because her videos are fun. It’s a tie between cardio and yoga, to be honest. I enjoy both.

It’s been a week (or a couple)

These past couple of weeks have been challenging. I have definitely had to go in my car and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo quite a few times. Every time I read the news I just get more and more anxious. It’s a habit I am trying to break. I try to go on the news to be more informed, but I end up feeling more anxious. Maybe it’s just a lot of information to take in. I am chanting for world peace. That is one of the best actions I can take.

Wishing all love and peace.

Appreciation- written 6/14/2019

Appreciation- written 6/14/19

I am grateful for everything.
For every challenge that came in my life
For every piece of food I eat
For the job I go to every day
For the family I come home to and embrace
In a marshmallow soft hug.

I am grateful to the environment
The Earth in which we live
I am grateful that while we live in dark times
We each have the potential to uncover the sunshine within 
Each of us.

I am grateful to the Starbucks barista
Who smiled at me today and whipped up
A delicious mocha frappuccino with soy
I am grateful I spent my lunch hour
Chilling with a good novel and my dessert drink. 

I am grateful to be alive
When I remember how many people have died recently.
I am grateful to be alive
When I watch the news and see people suffering
I am grateful to know
That even as one person 
I can make a difference by being myself. 
I am grateful to be alive.