Of La La Land

I watched the film La La Land a story about an actress and a musician pursuing their dreams in LA, a city that often fizzles wannabes' ambitions in smoke. This musical provides great entertainment in terms of musical and visual delight as well as philosophical reflection on pursuing life goals. I particularly like the last part where they showed a rosy tinted run on what life could possibly have been like if everything the characters wish falls in place. It then ends with the stark reality that life does not happen that way ie. there is no perfect life. It is all about choices and living with whatever the outcome and sacrifices.

This again brings to mind a phrase "Everything we encounter is our life". Every situation arises from causes and conditions, often from our own doing and often not or beyond us. Yet we have to live to the best that we can. In the final session of the Life Script Review class which I attended, there was much reckoning that hardships encountered in life often spur one towards something positive. The participant who had been through a divorce volunteers as a befriender to single parents. Another who came from a dysfunctional family that wrecked some of her siblings' lives now helps out in the prisons providing hope and moral support. Where life in some was once so skewed and imbalanced the need to achieve equilibrium kicked in at some point of time sending them on a spiritual quest.

Through it all the way I see self awareness and acceptance as of greatest importance.Again the serenity prayer surfaces in my mind:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

 

 

Go watch the show, its ending encapsulates this refrain.