Mirror, Mirror On The Wall.

I love watching movies. I am an avid movie goer, and watcher. Just last night I plugged through the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean despite having seen them both already. While I'm certain the reasons for watching movies are as wide and varied as the movies themselves, what I'd like to take some time to talk about is the relations we can make to characters in the films.

When we are going through hard times in our lives, and we happen across a more poignant movie we find we can relate to it very strongly. Subtle emotions and images speak volumes to us when we're experience the same feelings. The same can be true of more upbeat times in our lives as well. While many of the more inane comedies can be so steeped in their own world that they're impossible to relate to, I say a good movie always has some fragments of reality.

I've seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World twice now. Once with my dad and uncle, and again with some of my friends. I commented to my buddy Scott that part of the reason I enjoy the movie so much - aside from the fact that it's a total nerd fest - is that I can picture characters like those in the movie in my own life. It's comforting in a way to know that if the people in our lives are elaborate enough to appear by-proxy on screen then perhaps our own lives are not quite so dull as we may think.

Take a moment. Think about the things you've done and experienced in the past five years. Try and sort through the grey and find those splashes of colour. There's some legitimately amazing things we do in our lives that would be worthy of any silver screen. I know that a lot of the time people can get caught up in the doldrums of their life, and find that they're just spinning their wheels. While it's true there are some people out there who are really quite two-dimensional and uninteresting, I find that more often than not people are brimming with vivacity. The effects of love, anger, sadness, joy, etc. all have stories behind them. Stories that can be told with a look in ones eyes, or over pages and pages of a blog. We need to learn how to listen to these stories. I know I'm not great at this, often times when people are telling me a story I feel obligated to follow suit and tell them a story. This isn't always necessary.

Sometimes people want or need to talk and they need people to listen. Knowing the time and place for your stories is part of the craft of being a quality person that people like to spend time with. Those people in our lives who want to tell the stories don't always require us to pass judgment on them, or give advice. They just want to talk, whether it's to hear their own voice or to make their opinions known. I know I like to tell stories so as to add depth to my character. I think that I've had a fairly remarkable life, and I think there are some people out there who'd like to hear about it. Likewise I enjoy hearing the stories of my friends. When they've got something going on in their life and they want to talk to me about it, I welcome the opportunity. It's through stories that we really learn about people and grow closer to them.

I know when I was in high school I had a romantic ideal of what it meant to have friends. It was hushed evenings at cafes, sharing stories and dreams and building connections that would last a lifetime. Through high school I was disappointed by my clime which was filled with teenagers to whom friendship meant who you had on Facebook. I am finding now though as I move further into my twenties that I was just thinking ahead. I am getting those opportunities to share my life and stories with my friends, and they with me.

I know not all friendships last forever, but I can hope that for now the ones that I do have will last as long as they can.