Yesterday we watched just another movie…
As parents of a nearly two-year-old, we don’t get much ‘us’ time, so yesterday, when the little one dozed off a few hours before his daily schedule, we were clueless about what to do. Sort of when an employee gets a surprise half-day off because the boss is out of town and the poor thing doesn’t know what to do with all the free time in hand, yeah something like that. So we did the most obvious thing chronically sleep-deprived parents would do in our place, we watched a movie.
It is this new Disney movie, Jungle Cruise featuring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. (Yeah, please don’t judge us. This is not a post about watching an obscure French movie on MUBI and pouring out my relationship-deepening, cathartic advice. Or is it?) Jungle Cruise is okay, a fun movie, something that you watch and forget, nothing much to write about actually.
But, and yes, there is a but, this is what this post is about.
A few minutes back, while getting mentally ready (it is half-past nine in the am) to face what could be another stressful workday, I thought about the movie and smiled. Yes, it is a silly movie full of adventure tropes and a wisecracking main character full of dad jokes, the thing is, it made us laugh and chuckle and fall in love with a pet Jaguar named Proxima. It kept us together for around 2 hours of our maddeningly busy lives. And that is actually something to write about.
More often than not, we overlook these little moments, these day to day joys, because we have tuned ourselves to look out for those really awesome, perfect moments that will somehow make our lives incredible. They do, but they are so few and far out that it doesn’t make sense to live only for those perfect moments. They are the highlight reels of our lives yes, but a whole lot is going on regularly that makes the movie. And like movies, not every moment of our life can be a blockbuster, most will have to play the role of an underdog that no one wants to write much about.
So yeah, let’s try, let’s cherish those hurried breakfasts, those quick WhatsApp chats in the middle of endless meetings, those little evening walks outside while haggling with vegetable vendors, let’s try and lift up these obscure, underdog moments of our lives…these are where we live our lives.