Pursuit of HappYness...

Ravs and me are kindred souls when movies are in question.We are like a pair of siamese twins joined together at our movie taste.Well to start off something new , we decided we would take a week's pick and recommend each other movies we had seen (...not just off IMDB but movies we had personally liked and even though hard to recall we would try.. our best).My first movie was the "The pursuit of HappYness"..Critically acclaimed, loved by the masses and inspired by a true life story I was yet to see it for myself inspite of the rave reviews.So when Ravs reccomended I was quick to check it out.I luckily got a dvd print and nothing seemed better.

I had seen the actual Chris Gardener in an interview and was finding it a little difficult to accept Will Smith in the role.But as the movie went on the lines faded and i was more and more absorbed in what the movie had to say.We humans believe that the hardships we face are unique to us and probably no one would understand.We sometimes ; and not always look back on our hardest times and think that none has faced what we have.But seeing his story only makes me realise that "Truth is stranger than fiction"..Had this story not been inspired by a man's life where he is bankrupt , has an estranged wife and evicted in a span of four months preceded by a really tough time of trying to make it in a business I would anyday not buy the story.

Things which touched me most was his almost dogmatic determination in keeping his son and not letting go , not once does he let his miseries overshadow his want of doing something.He goes through a grueling finance internship just on will power and undeniably the most determined frame of mind.He takes on things with cheer and his personality is his sunshine as he trudges through the tough times.Nothing bogs him down ! Absolutely nothing ! And that's what affects people around him and makes them take to his persona more and more..The triumph of human spirit is the essence of this movie ! And to juxtapose this learning with a verse i heard in another great movie Pulp Fiction :

"Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."

I believe there is no black and white personified in this world.I believe in the intangible.Think about it.We all desire the intangibles.Don't we ? Love , respect,happYness,passion,power...These abstract lines depict the intangibles of human frailty and also at the same time the humane power.What I make of this verse is that the righteous man is the one who realizes he has this power capped within himself ..the power to do something, to power to create, the power to win and keeps the passion to take it forward.The inequities of the evil men is the one who tries to dissuade you from doing the same,wants to instill in you that you can't do it.The miseries and the failures are the inequities beset in our path and we need to shepherd ourselves out from this valley of death(I say thus because a life without goals is no less than being trapped in a valley of death)..

Pursuit of HappYness (wrongly and intentionally done so in the movie) is actually a clause in the Declaration of Independence by America's one of the greatest thinking mind...Thomas Jefferson.I wonder what ticks those great minds who can inspire generations and think thoughts that can hold universal appeal even in posterity..Then again it is said about Jefferson by president Kennedy when he invited 49 nobel laureates to the White House :

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone"....

I think someone like me can only wonder at what goes on in great thinking minds ?

~A,trust the thinking mind...