Genie in Japan

Happiness & Heroism

I think I’m starting to like independent film. I used to despise them for their renderings of reality–either too extraordinary or too ordinary, and often times without a hero or happy ending.  For example, the movie “Lost in Translation.”  I hated it.  People expect me to like it because it’s Japanesie.  Meanwhile, I was waiting around for a plot to start, but it ended and turned out that it was just film of people living.  It was unhappy.  It was boring.

I just saw “Motel,” starring Sung Kang.  It was an independent film.  I was complaining about the lack of story when my brother basically told me to sit down, shut up and realize that the beauty is in the lives of the characters. “Motel” was sad, it was perverse, it wasn’t so eventful.

But real people are sad and perverse, and life isn’t always so eventful.  Real people and real lives don’t always have happy beginnings.  Or happy ends.  Or happy middles.  The happiness is sprinkled in once in a while; why do people feel that they are entitled to 24-hour happiness?

I’m guilty of that too.  But I’m getting content with the fact that I will not always be happily-ever-after-always-and-forever.  I’ll probably be happy on my birthday.  I’ll be happy on my wedding day.  I’ll be happy the day I have children.  I’m happy for my friends.  I have moments of sheer joy, reading an e-mail or listening to a song.  But I don’t have to be happy in-between.

And I don’t have to be a hero(ine) either.