May 13, 2013
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The Last Crusade
At that point, the nazi shoots Sean Connery in the stomach.
“So, Dr. Jones (Harrison Ford)… if you want to save your father, find the Holy Grail.”
…or something like that.
We had VHS, and my mom had friends at work, sometimes who had two VHSes video machines, so that meant that they could copy tapes for us. It didn’t happen often, but for the movies that we did have, I cherished them.
Before my college days when my outlook on life came to be defined by shonen tales and bildungsromans, my life started off idolising adventure: Swinging across chasms of snakes and fire with a bullship; dueling with lightsabres at the ends of the galaxy; flying to Neverland on nothing but faith. Compounded with my uncles comic book collection, there was probably always the understanding that nothing in real life would ever be quite so fantastic– but there was nothing stopping me from trying. ANy little fantasy in life that I could play out would be an objectively small, but subjectively priceless.
The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade is one of the most fanstastic items that I have ever come across in all my years of childhood (which I extend to underlap even my adult life).
It represents the ability to keep things as they are. Not that kind of situation where someone asks you “would you like to be 18 again?” because, really, I wouldn’t.
“Would you like to be 18 again, if you could take with you what you have now?”
Hmm… maybe. Maybe if I had the mind of my 18 year old self, who, at the time, was only concerned about getting better at Jeet Kune Do.
But on the whole? Would I give up all the experiences I’ve had until now, just to be able to start again at a certain point?
Probably not.
There are many points in my life that have been good, and many times that have been bad, but on the whole– I would no more go back in time than I would commit suicide.
And what is suicide, really? To me– it’s putting an end to all experiences. It’s a decision that the pain of seeking out more outweighs what I could get out of the process. And I don’t feel that. I don’t feel that at all.
It’s one thing to go back in time out of curiosity, or because you don’t remember. It’s another thing entirely to go back because you feel regret– that you could have or should have done something different.
I don’t like story arcs with time travel– it gets too messy with time travel and those kinds of things. But what I do like, from The Last Crusade, is the idea that I can live forever– because who I am now is who I am. I can’t change that. I don’t have to be proud of it, because it’s not necessarily an acheivement. But I shouldn’t feel guilty about it– because if that were the case, I’d constantly be living to the dictates of something in the past.
That might be why I’m constantly bothered by the fact that I’m about a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Debt is a lot like guilt, except that it doesn’t go away just because you decide to feel confident about yourself. It is, however, a representation in some way or another of something you must do because of something in the past.
I’m slowly but surely coming to terms with the fact that debt should not be guilt. You might think this should be pretty easy– but for someone who grew up under a pretty tight family, my conception of “owing” gives it quite a bit of weight.
Ironically, studying law has helped me sort that out a bit– borrowing money isn’t wrong, so long as it’s contractually agreed upon by both sides. It’s a means to an end.
Getting over the guilt of being about a hundred thousand dollars in debt has not been easy, but it has been necessary for me to enjoy enough quality of life to keep myself sane.
I just finished an essay for one of my classes, Business Associations. It was only 2000 words, but given that I had other midterms, and I was working pretty heavily on clerkship things, I really only managed to start working on Sauturday, even though it was due Monday at 4pm. No matter how you look at it, 2 days and something isn’t really a lot of time to get a research paper done.
But when it gets done, it’s done– I get this sense, not of relief, but more akin to triumph: here’s me, and here’s the world. The world tried to kick me down, but I got through it. I survived.
And while it might not be glamorous– slaving away in front of a laptop for two days straight without proper food or sleep never is– it is glorious, because that’s what life is: glorious, compared to the alternative.
My greatest fear is that some day, all my adventures will come to an end. I wish there were such a thing as the Holy Grail– not because I want to be able to turn back time and fix whatever regrets I might have– but because I want to be able to keep going forward.
I often forget my age. Someone at judo a couple of weeks ago thought I was kidding when I said I was 30 years old– he thought I was early twenties. Awwww, shucks. (“Just because I can throw you around doesn’t mean I’m young!”) But maybe that’s because I’m at a stage in my life where, despite all the shit that goes on, I keep finding reasons to justify going another day.
There might be a difference here– when I was in my twenties, I had no purpose in life. I was trying to sort out who I wanted to be, but I had no idea of the mechanisms or the pathways to figure that out. So I was just there idling, and being egocentric, and jumping on any interesting opportunities that fell into my lap.
At my current state, I feel like I have a very good idea of who I want to be, and a better idea of how to get there. As a result, I’m pretty busy– but those few things that I make time for, I treat them as lifelines that keep me grounded as a person.
From an outside view, there’s probably no difference– because that just means that when I do things, I do them with energy and conviction. If I am somewhere, it’s because I want to be there.
Largely, I think this is probably one of those things that I’ve become better at– managing how much trouble I get myself into. I mean, a lot of the times, we have the ability to make choices in our lives about what we want to get ourselves into. Sometimes, we get into things that we don’t enjoy, and that’s okay for a bit. But we must never forget that at the end of the day, time is limited and we should only do things that we can really attribute worthwhileness to.
Even lacking the Grail, we still must go forward.
