Day # 9131, or, The Time Traveler's Dilemma

Actually, it's already Day #9132... ^_^ But day 9131 turned out to be so eventful that I had no time to post over here! Anyway, perhaps the pictures will do the talking.

Today I watched The Time Traveler's Wife with my family, and I have to say that it is an interesting movie. My favorite part of the movie was anytime anyone said the words, "Everything's going to be all right" (or "OK" or any version thereof). Normally, when someone says this to someone else who is having a tough time, there is no way the first someone could really mean it. I mean, really mean it. Sure, I can tell it to someone close I've known for a long time and whose troubles I am well aware of, and even perhaps whose troubles I've encountered in my life in the past as well. But when it comes down to it, I have zero authority to say those words, because I myself do not know how things will turn out. In the movie, though, whenever someone said those words, that someone had some authority over the statement.

Before I went into the movie, I thought the main conflict within it was going to be a series of tensions between wanting to tell the truth and wanting to reassure the other. But it didn't turn out quite that way at all. What was especially interesting was that the first time in the movie we hear the words "Everything's going to be all right" it comes from the (future) wife, the non-time-traveler. She speaks the truth, of course, because she has already met the time-traveler, but the one she met was older (and obviously wiser and doing better for himself).

One of the humanizing realizations of the movie occurs when you realize that the time-traveler is not much better off than we are--although he can see his future, he can do nothing to change it. But this also is part of the rules of the literary game, because everyone--wisely--sooner or later catches on to this fact really quickly and turn their energies towards the small things that make each other's lives more... what's the word? Livable.

The movie ends up having a different kind of tension--the characters end up in a balancing act where they try to prepare each other for the many eventualities of life. In this environment, "Everything's going to be all right" ends up being true, no matter who says it. And, paradoxically, because of this moral of consoling each other in the small things, the movie ends up teaching us that it's OK to say those words to someone who is going through a tough time, even though you have absolutely no idea how things will actually turn out--as long as you are willing to be part of the solution.

It must be nice to hear from someone who actually knows that "everything's going to be all right." Even if that someone knows he or she is lying.

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Broken Social Circle, "Love Will Tear Us Apart". This is a cover of a Joy Division song that was the wedding reception formal dance in the movie. Sounds imo.