The title to this post might be a little bit misleading. I am not at all going to talk about conflict per se. Let me explain.
I recently reviewed the movie starring Will Smith, Hitch and I got very surprised. I saw it for the first time when it came out originally. And it didn’t surprise me for a second back then. However, this time, and don’t get me wrong I love this movie, I found it to be naïve in a way. What I mean by that is that there is a clear line between good and bad, it is very clear who is a good guy, who is a bad guy, how they act and what to do and what not to. No gray zone in miles. You know what I mean?
Whereas, today’s movies are one big gray zone. It’s Hitchcock effect all over again. We like the villains, we judge the “do-gooders”, we accept and more and our tolerance levels are much lower (or at least something’s going on there). So all of it got me thinking, have we changed that much in some ten years that movies reflect who we are today? How is it that 15-20 years ago everybody was smoking cigarettes and drinking tones of coffee, but people were happy, were meeting each other (not via social media, but on the bus stops and in cafés), but today everybody’s eating quinoa, drinking smoothies and spend most their time online?
Then I held that thought and said to myself that that’s actually not it. What happened according to me is that, with all the available information we receive now, we have more chances to go out there and discover the world around us, but also the world within us. What I mean by that is we are no longer necessarily attached to the conditions of life we have been given, and we have a unique opportunity to find out who we are and what we want to do with our lives. And that’s not necessarily a pretty process. Sometimes it leads you to the very dark corners of your or mind or (worse) soul and it takes great courage and vulnerability to ho there, feel these feelings and come back a better person. Sometimes though, we often see people living with an “armor” of limited beliefs and convictions handed to them on the corner of banality and fear, so thwy never dare to question their environment and go on with their lives. And this is exactly where the conflict comes in handy.
So what I have been rambling about in past few paragraphs is maybe all those movies, literature and music is to help us to feed the inter-conflict within ourselves, to push us from our comfort zone and make us ask questions to ourselves. These characters, being complex, teach us about person we want to be, but also and in the same time, who we don’t want to be. Conflict is a start button of this not easy at all process. It does not always feel good, but it gets you to think. To be honest with yourself and to wonder. It triggers self-questioning and is crucial in order to allow the transformation of your soul.
I think there’s a very important task we have in this self-conflicting rustling between morals and expectation, and that is to find your belonging. It is easy today to conform, to fit, to follow, but oh is it hard to find where you belong, where your soul can rest. And to leave you with this though I will quote Maya Angelou:
You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.
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