This piece is drawn from my heart. It is a piece of inspiration that I drew from the movie, ‘The Amazing Spiderman – 2 (2014)’. A film that made me shed a tear. It has been quite some time now since I felt this generous with my tears. Even a single drop of it. Yet I could not control myself. In a movie greatly dominated by bouts of violence, scenes in which the main actor Spiderman is involved in trying to save the world, faces a time of devastating magnitude. The moment when he loses the girl he loved so much. One whom unfortunately had to die while trying to help his boyfriend, Spiderman, to bring down the villain who was out to destroy their City. In the subsequent days, Spiderman is lost in himself. Each day of the next five months is punctuated with a visit to his late girlfriend’s gravesite. The city meanwhile was experiencing more and more violence. Everyone feared for their lives and others even said that Spiderman had abandoned them. Yet from all these people, no one stood to the monsters that kept on tearing down their lives. No one except for a little boy who idolized Spiderman and always wanted to be like him. The little boy decided that just like Spiderman, he was going to face the monster. He was going to restore sanity to his city. He went ahead and stepped out from the crowd, approaching the monster. A little boy in Spiderman’s suit and armed with nothing but courage and the will to act. The will to be an agent of change.
Many of us are faced with trying times. We lose our loved ones and question our strength to surge on. We lose our jobs and feel like the world has come to an end right in front of our faces! We score low grades in a test or even in the final test and pronounce our own doom! We hence recoil and brood to ourselves forgetting that we are actually still alive! That we are still able to influence our circumstances for the better! According to the words of Norman Cousins, ’The tragedy of life is not death, but that we let die inside of us while we live.’ Just like Spiderman, for the first five months following his girlfriend’s death he let hope die in him while he continued living. He opted to brooding over that which he could not change; the death of his girlfriend, instead of channeling his energy in that which he could actually influence; the downfall of his home city! Simone De Beauvoir says, ‘In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.’
It is obvious that the little boy could not have felled the great monster. Yet he never shied away from trying! He took the chance as soon as it came his way. I shed a tear because what I saw was an innocent child, drawn so much by the belief in Spiderman and by the desire to fill in the shoes of his hero that he never for once thought about his safety. For him, saving this great city and everyone in it; his mom and friends too, meant more than his life. Even though Spiderman finally appeared and saved the day, nothing stood out more than this act of courage and complete selflessness from the little boy. So much as to invoke me into writing this piece with the hope that it may get through to you in the same way it did me. It is easy to dispel the story as nothing but the creation of the filmmakers. Yet that scene had more to do with conveying a message than just providing entertainment or sadistic comic relief. Yet that is the same feeling our little ones have. The feeling of duty and responsibility to keep us safe. A small child in his random chit chat will tell you that he will handle all the bad people and protect you. So warm these words can be! Yet we all grow up to forget all this resilience! Most of us even specialize in quitting!
It is important to live a life full of hope. Once we stop hoping then we lose ourselves. It is the hope and the actions we do that will enable us realize our intended objectives. Hope and actions. Hope is the belief or expectation that something wished for, can or will happen. It is never too late to inject that hope in your life. And while at it, always remember to follow it up with actions.
Dr.Shrinks.
The Shrinks' Blog 