the unreview – "Our taken for granted lives : thoughts on the movie Cast Away"

“We both have done the math. Kelly added it all up and… knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had… lost her. Because I was never going to get off that island. I was going to die there, totally alone. I was going to get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how and where it was going to happen. So… I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course, you know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I – , I couldn’t even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that’s when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that’s what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day, my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I’m back in Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass… And I’ve lost her all over again. I’m so sad that I don’t have Kelly. But I’m so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I got to keep breathing. Because tomorrow, the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” -Chuck Noland, played by Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away.

to have ice in the glass, to be back home everyday, to watch a sunrise once again in life… it is plainly ridiculous how much we take for granted in our lives!

perhaps each one of us needs to be marooned on an island of either sickness or relationship breakdown or job loss or something like that to realize how fortunate we are to have the kind of life we are living now. because all we do is keep cribbing, complaining, crying that this is not right and this should have been mine and always looking up to the next guy who has just a bit more than us… we all want more… more money, more attractiveness, more knowledge, more this more that but never realize that what we’ve have is a hundred million times more important that what we don’t have!

to have breath in our lungs, to have love in our hearts, to be alive, just aware of this life within is the biggest joy in life. let’s be grateful for what is given to us, and let us spread the joy that this awareness provides, let us not take our lives as taken for granted anymore. *amen*