Entry 14.0 - The Half of It
The Half of It
Define Love.
What does it mean to you?
Did the definition change with passing of your teenage, 20’s or 30’s?
Is it something to do with “Age”?
Or is it more to do with experiences (good or bad) you had in your life.
Is it different in small cities vs big cities,
Does it change with distance,
What matters the most and least,
Who brings what to the table,
What brings you and binds you together,
(How come with every person, the meaning and intensity of these factor changes?)
My first idea of love was,
Talking endlessly on calls and chats,
Reaching tuitions early and leaving late to have those 10 min walks (times we had to answer at home for every movement of life)
Going for coffee at CCD (project work:p) where we would end up buying only one and share it for hours,
Speaking to each other without filters and backspaces,
Passing chits to each other during class and even leaving some in each other bags,
Learning the time when our calls got automatically disconnected after 2 hours due to default phone settings,
To lose a bowling game against them just to watch their victory dance and chirp,
It was a world of our own with so few distractions..
But then, things change. That’s when you realise,
“Love is naïve. That when love leaves you, it leaves with a gaping hole in our hearts.”
But if I see it today, that’s not even the “Half Of It”…
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The movie starts with a monologue,
Here’s a part of it,
“Greek gods say, we humans are split into half when we land on earth,
Which leaves us forever longing, to find the “other half”.
It is said that when one half finds the other, there’s an unspoken understanding, everything comes in unison and the world becomes perfect.
Of course, the ancient greeks never went to High School, otherwise they would realise our capacity to mess our life even when in Love.
This is not actually a love story. At least, not the one where anyone gets what they want in the end.”
(Alice wu deserves huge credit for her brilliant writing in the movie)
It’s a story of love, finding it and more importantly understanding what it is. A story told through Ellie, Paul and Astor’s life in high school.
A tantalizing story of letters/messages passed between 2 people, somehow ending up entangling threads of life of 3 people.
A perfect recipe for disaster or start of something new, entirely?
Paul Munsky
A good looking yet weird guy who falls in love with a beautiful girl, without ever talking to her. He is someone so simple, innocent and caring. You could hardly imagine him as a player of high school football team.
From a traditional family who’s in the sausage business for generations, he’s determined to re-invent the whole thing. He wants to do these things, break norms and experience love. The only thing lacking, is Courage.
He says,
“Isn’t that what Love is?
The amount of effort you put in loving someone”..
(Maybe we all started with this thought. You can say this is too childish, innocent and naïve. But isn’t it still something we all want? Someone putting in their efforts.)
His character ages well with experience. He realises, that love is also seeing someone, beyond the usual things. Their smallest of habits, things which make them smile or irritates them. Things which mean to them, he really starts seeing the “Obvious Unseen”.
(Thing about the word in context of the person you like/love, “The Obvious Unseen”)
In his beautiful arc, he discovers there is no 1 right way to love. It’s different with every person. Sometimes you find it, standing right in front of you, never realizing that she is “The One”.
(Life and Love have a way of catching up when and where you least expect it to be.)
Astor Flores
Her face is revealed in a choir session where she is singing a John Denver classic – Annie’s Song,
“You fill up my senses,
Like a night in a forest,
Like the mountains in springtime,
Like a walk in the rain,
Like a storm in the desert, Like a sleepy blue ocean,
You fill up senses,
Come fill me again…
At first, she feels like an eye candy in the movie. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many movies where characters are used a mere tool to show something. Here, one doesn’t know what to expect from her. Forever silent, lost in the prison of her own thoughts. And then she says something like this,
“I’ve thinking about what it means, seeing and not seeing. I heard that, the difference between a good painting and a great painting is typically 5 strokes. Usually, The 5 boldest strokes in the painting, question is, which 5 strokes and are you bold enough to make them?”
(Makes me think, how brave/bold can we be in life, reaching out for something we want, taking a chance on a perfectly healthy friendship, trying to a make a bold stroke and maybe, ruin everything.)
Seeing her, people want to be beautiful like Astor. Its such an important thing for us, to be beautiful. For people to value and acknowledge us for that. It’s not a unfair thought, the only issue is how much space does it take up in our minds.
For Astor, she always felt like an outsider in Squehamish. Over the years, she has gotten into mediocre company. A place where no one sees the real her, where nobody understands her. In finding comfort, she is losing herself. A trap called, “We accept the love we think, we deserve.”
In her journey, I see that Love makes you do things you never thought you would. You can dip fries in a milkshake because they like it, go to a football game, make something personal for them however silly it may seem. You can do things you never imagine, somtimes a bit low and sometimes things which takes strength you never knew you had. Love pushes you to go beyond your comfort zone and pushes your boundaries.”
(There are only a few teenage drama’s I like. This one draws a good parallel to the show “Sex Education”. There are parallel conflicts and qualities like the one Maeve, Otis and other characters had. They have different stories, but the way they say things, they have given a chance to a whole generation to understand themselves.)
Ellie Chu
A Chinese immigrant, who lost her mother in childhood and became an adult too early. She is that kid who took ton of responsibility and is the diligent, hardworker, sensitive one. One which usually people call a bore, nerd or a tightass.
She funnily boasts about this in the beginning,
“The good thing about being different is, no one expects you to be like them.”
In a desperate moment, she becomes part of something, she doesn’t want/wont be able to come out of. Though with Paul, she finds friendship, a perfect companion, he grows on her so well, that she could also feel the depth of his emotions, something she thought he didn’t have.
Come to think of it, do any of us feel fully understood by others? Ellie is smart and cares for people in her own way. She never expects anything from anyone but is self aware of everything. All she has in her life which is only hers is that guitar she plays in her before falling asleep.
She says something to Astor which is haunting and yet so powerful,
"𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬."
But doing so much so early, taking so much responsibility, doesn’t mean you mature early. That, takes time.
Ellie putting herself between things, hiding behind someone to chase what she herself wants maybe was her biggest mistake. She learned it the hard way, that love is about intent too.
How can someone who know so much, sees so little.
Love is not only understanding the person. Its about intent too. Unlike Astor and Paul, she’s different. Rather than finding love, she finally understood what it actually meant.
She says,
Love isn’t kind, patient and humble. Love is Messy, cruel and challenging. It’s not about trying to find the “perfect other half”. Its about the trying, reaching and failing.
So coming back to the question again,
How does our definition for love change?
Does it change with Age?
Like we think and talk about this, that as we grow old and become mature, our checklist for people grows smaller and we look more for character. Its not a list of 10 requirements anymore and more to do with a solid foundation of 2-3 things.
Does it mean that growing old with age, we settle for less?
Or those are the things that ever actually mattered.
I think our definition of love changes the most with the experiences we have.
Some look for things they missed in their last relationships,
Some look for personality traits they see in their home,
Some look for complete opposites or perfect replicas,
Some only look for compatibility, companionship and everyday things.
Urgghh..
Ellie chu was complaining about love in high school, she has no idea how we have messed this all up as adults.
Complicating things with expectations and distractions. Over rationalizing and justifying what we feel and what we want has left us with a foggy vision.
We want love to become solution to every problem of our life. In the end, it never feels enough. We ask too much of it and give too little.
On most of the days and situations (tough and happy),
Its so simple and needs to so less for all to become okay and make sense in our lives,
Like something Ellie wrote in her song,
“Here we are,
Took so long, came so far,
I slept half the way on your shoulder,
Safe and Sound,
As the night tore and spun around,
And we had to get lost to be found..
(The song makes a bit more sense in the move!!)
Hope you watch it....
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Trailer Link --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Song links –
Half way – https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Annie’s song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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