Stranger Than Fiction

In my mind, the movie Stranger Than Fiction is one of those rare masterpieces. It isn't an Oscar winning film or a box-office hit, not an amazing true story or a political statement about a global issue, but for some reason this movie breaks my heart and makes a special list of movies for me. I just watched this film and I absolutely love it because I think that this is a movie about everyone and is completely true. It is about a man who continues to just go through the motions in his life. Every day he wakes up and does the exact same thing and takes the exact same bus at the exact same time every day to his job as an IRS agent and goes home at the exact same time and goes to sleep at the exact same time by himself every day. He doesn't actually live his life, he is simply following a path that would allow him to live a normal life and die at an old age of a normal cause as a normal person. However, that is simply not good enough, at least it isn't for me and it shouldn't be for anybody else. Life is much too short to be going through the motions and not actually getting to live. In the words of Braveheart, "every man dies, but not every man really lives". And that is just so true because it is inevitable that you will die, but you do not know when and you do not where and you certainly do not know how. Some people will die young which is horrible and incredibly sad but they will have lived their lives to the fullest and had no regrets because they didn't just go with the flow or along the easiest path, they went against it and perhaps a little off course and they lived and they loved and they enjoyed their life. And some people will die extremely old and they will not have lived at all. They will have had more literal and realistic experience but truthfully that young teenager who really lived their life had more experience than this elderly person could ever imagine and they will die alone and unhappy and full of regrets. They may have been successful with lots of money and a great job living what they think is a great life and been with lots of beautiful women or men in their life but when it comes down to those last few breaths and you suddenly realize that death is knockin on your freaken door, none of that matters. The only thing that will matter are your memories and your experiences and the people that surround you that love you. It sounds cheezy but that's what life is, that's all it is and until you realize that you will be stuck going through the motions.