Deep and meaningful? Naive assumptions? You decide...

So last night we all piled into the car and went out for an evening movie then dinner after. We saw "Slumdog Millionaire," which just as all the movie critics have done, I would highly recommend. Of the many things that were impressed upon me while watching the movie, I think the biggest thing I came away with was the simple reiteration of the belief that you just cannot judge a book by its cover. As close as you can become with another person, we can never truly appreciate their experiences, their history. Because we are not simply a collection of events and memories. Our memories are enhanced not only from what we've gone through, but from the sights, sounds, and smells of those memories. The emotions we felt, the actions we took or did not take; the events of our lives are full-bodied multi-sensory experiences that are impossible to truly replicate for somebody else. They are not just stories, they are not bare skeletons in our closets, they are our history. Just like what you would read about another country, religion, or people, we've all fought our battles, had our times of peace or times of brewing hostility, we learn, sometimes we don't learn, we rise and we fall.

For some the flux of life is greater than others', and I would venture to guess that it would be impossible to travel enough to really see how we all live, to even begin to appreciate the different struggles and accomplishments that make up the livelihoods of the vast number of cultures that exist in our world. I have grown up far from the slums of India so my problems are vastly different; don't think for a second though that I'm going to compare my struggle with cancer to the struggle to survive that exists in not just India, but far too many places around the globe. However, in the most basic sense I think we all share the ups and downs, for some it may be daily, for others it could be lifelong. But we're all placed here on this earth not necessarily knowing why, and we simply do our best. Thanks to free will our 'best' is up to our own interpretation; sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. I don't think anyone truly knows the 'secret' to life, or at least not collectively, for all of us. So we live, we die, we struggle, we succeed; we do what we think is best because that's all we have, that's our best answer. As much as we share, we are each our own person, there's always the exception to a rule, outliers, unknowns. We are all individuals with our own histories that can be shared, but never fully replicated for another's true appreciation and understanding. That's why we can't judge. To each his own.