From "Kate and Leopold"

I saw this movie the other night, and although it's supposed to be a light, romantic comedy with not much substance in it, there were some quotes which I thought were particularly witty and that stuck with me... I decided to write them down here so that I can refer to them later on, as they set me thinking for maybe future posts on here :)

I will now leave you in their company.

Roebling: Time. Time, it has been proposed, is the fourth dimension. And yet, for mortal man, time has no dimension at all. We are like horses with blinders, seeing only what lies before us. Forever guessing the future and fabricating the past.

Stuart (about him finding a doorway to time travel): It is no more crazy than a dog finding a rainbow. Dogs are colourblind, Gretchen. They don't see colour. Just like we don't see time. We can feel it, we can feel it passing, but we can't see it. It's just like a blur. It's like we're riding in a supersonic train and the world is just blowing by, but imagine if we could stop that train, eh, Gretchen? Imagine if we could stop that train, get out, look around, and see time for what it really is? A universe, a world, a thing as unimaginable as colour to a dog, and as real, as tangible as that chair you're sitting in. Now if we could see it like that, really look at it, then maybe we could see the flaws as well as the form. And that's it; it's that simple. That's all I discovered. I'm just a... a guy who saw a crack in a chair that no one else could see. I'm that dog who saw a rainbow, only none of the other dogs believed me.

Leopold: The brave are simply those with the clearest vision of what is before them - glory and danger alike and notwithstanding, go out to meet it.

Leopold: What has happened to the world? You have every convenience and comfort, yet no time for integrity.

Kate: Maybe [...] that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we've been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney.

About more ethereal things

One of my favourite mythological stories is Oedip, because it speaks of the inescapability of destiny, and I think that seeing how somebody is doing everything he can to change its destiny, only to reinforce it even more makes for a good, though tragic story. Talking about this with a friend set me thinking... am I a predeterminist? I'd say not overall, though I am, up to an extent. More precisely, I think that the resources and the environment we are born in largely determine our capabilities afterwards, but I believe in those people that can challenge the odds and change their destiny. There is no "impossible" in my mind.. there is only "I don't want it hard enough". And I believe everyone can achieve whatever they set their mind to.

The only things I think are prederetmined in our lives are our family, out genetic inheritance from our parents, and the place and social environment we are born with. It has been proven that these factors affect the way our personality is shaped at a young age. At this early stage, they largely determine the opportunities which will be available to us in the future and our capability to seize these opportunities. A child born in Africa, in a family which lives with less than $1 per capita per day will clearly not have the same opportunities as a child born in a (even poor) family in Western Europe. Again, a child born with a physical handicap or a mental disability will enjoy fewer options than a healthy child. However, I think our true worth as human beings lies in being able to achieve more than our potentialities and overcoming our limits... achieving the things we really want even if everybody says they're impossible. This is what character is about: strong will, ambition, self-control, and a little bit of madness. Men should be visionaries and see ahead of others what they can do with the resources they've been endowed with, and do that better than most people would. It is a bit like management, and a bit like gambling.

But if we can carve our own destiny.. then how come some things can be predicted beforehand? Things which are, by no means, mere coincidences? I am pretty skeptical about this to be honest, but some things make me wonder. A few well-done TV shows on Discovery, some stories from people around me about premonition-like dreams, and recently, talking to a friend who actually saw some of the things predicted to him happen, with little chance of that being mere coincidence... To what extent can our lives, be predicted then, if our destiny is dynamic? We change it every second by the choices we make, and by choosing one path we completely forego so many others... And if it can be predicted, to what extent can it be changed?

I watched "If Only" about a week ago, which made me ponder more on this theme. It's a movie about a businessman who, after his girlfriend dies in an accident shortly after they had a fight, gets the chance to relive the day all over again, in the hope of changing the events that led up to her getting killed. (source Wikipedia) During the movie, everybody, even him, seems to believe the first day was more like a premonitory dream. But did he get this dream in order to change things, or was it more so that he'll do everything to fulfill what should, in fact, have happened from the very beginning? Did he manage to change anything, by the fact that she did not die, or did he only follow his destiny? Perhaps it was him who should have died from the very beginning... and this dream was sent to him only to help him tell her how much he loved her, before he left. I tend to interpret the movie more like this... but in this case, destiny would be a closed circle, we would live in a sphere and we could have different roads to get from one end to another, but the final destination would always be the same. And I do not want to believe that.

PS. For a beautiful story about harshly changing one's destiny, even if for a short while, read "Flowers for Algernon" :)