Chick Flicks

My mom said something really interesting about chick flicks in the car today. Don't they always seem to present terrible situations in a sugar-coated, "it will all be OK in the end" sort of way?

At the end of the move, things like divorce, heartbreak, betrayal, etc. wrap up neatly in a nice ending that makes everyone feel good about themselves.

What happened to classics like Gone With the Wind, Great Gatsby, or Troy? Helen brought down an entire kingdom with her shenanigans. Queen Elizabeth did the opposite and got maaaaad respect for it. Actually, a lot of historians say that her rule significantly altered the course of Western history, in a good way. What's funny is that stories likes these from different eras are probably closer to showing the real outcomes in ours. At least more than chick flicks do.

Thinking about this mentally prepared me for what happened a few hours later. A woman was crying as she came out of the bathroom and I felt terrible for her. It was slightly awkward to ask, but I went up to see if she needed prayer. We ended up talking for hours about the challenges she was facing in her marriage, and afterwards she felt so much better.

One day I'll probably look back and realize that everything else in my life was hay, rubble, and wood, burning away in a fire, when moments like these were pure gold.

I'm so sick of the way our culture trivializes everything. We put price tags on each other based on how attractive, funny, wealthy, talented blah blah blah we are. I feel like Peeta in the Hunger Games when he wanted to prove to the game maker that the capitol didn't own him.

Even if we don't agree with the laws that govern this system, we are still under them somehow. For the past week I've had this curious, growing hunger in me to pendulum swing - in a good way - towards something else. Something more noble.