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When Journey is Destination
All this 3D technology hardly impresses me because I have to deal with major vertigo issues if I watch a film in 3D. But Disney-Pixar’s latest animation film, Up, deserves a mention for it is Pixar’s first initiative in digital 3D.
But while people find the film graphically exhilarating and digitally perfect, I was more touched by the most basic of all adult themes, undying love, so flawlessly portrayed in the film.
Right from the silent montage that takes us on the heart-warming journey of Carl and Ellie becoming best friends as adventurous children, getting married and growing old together, to Carl becoming a widower who takes upon himself the task of fulfilling their childhood dream to reach the mythical Paradise Falls, the film is all about true love.
The film teaches you how to let go and move on as do Carl and Ellie after they learn the sad truth that they cannot have children early on in their marriage. Upset they are, with the boisterous Ellie withdrawing in her shell for a while. But soon they learn to live in the most pleasant companionship, growing old while sitting on the same armchairs every evening, holding hands as the read. Adult themes form the gist of the film with some moments leaving you misty-eyed, while others make you laugh outright.
The truly inspiring lesson in the film is not about following your dreams. It is about fulfilling someone else’s. Ellie, being the more adventurous of the two was actually behind the idea of visiting their childhood hero at Paradise Falls.
Eventually it became the dream of both and they began collecting money to make the journey. But as often happens in real life marriages, the piggy bank had to be broken open frequently in the years that followed, sometimes for medical needs and at others to meet unforeseen expenses.
Ellie never reminded Carl of the dream and it was most likely that she forgot about it herself as they both adopted what was a mundane style of living for as spirited a couple as they had been. That is how they grow old. Yet Ellie has the modesty to describe her journey with Carl as the best adventure ever. Talk about the film being romantic. As your marriage grows in years, you learn that true romance is not just about flowers, presents and birthday cards although there is no need to write them off as being completely unnecessary.
Marriage is actually about sharing your dreams so they become sacred for both. It does not matter that they remain unfulfilled at the end of the journey because by then, the journey becomes far more important than the realisation of your dreams.
Marriage is about compromises made, worries shared and lots of happy moments in its midst. It is about growing up and eventually growing old in peaceful harmony. Most important of all, it is about being each other’s best friend because even if you are one of those couples who the Almighty has bestowed with a noisy brood of kids, eventually they will fly out of the nest. That will leave you with no one but your better half with whom you better have a solid relationship that promises you love, support and companionship.
So the film has made me think. Will my marriage reach that point when my hubby and I share the same dreams? We already share some like the one in which we will eventually live in a cottage with big windows to let in light, whose garden has countless rose bushes and where a wooden sunroom and makeshift library are a must.
But what about my dream to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for a novel that I have only just started to think about writing? Or my husband’s desire to live on the moon even though the probability of my liking space travel is minimal given that I hate air travel!
I am hoping that God willing, when I make my acceptance speech at the Nobel award ceremony, I will be sharing the glory of that moment with my husband. After all, he already believes that I can win without reading the manuscript of my unwritten novel. So yes, maybe that is how individual dreams become shared although I still don’t know how we are going to build our dream cottage on the moon!
While I try to work out the logistics of this issue and others that are bound to come on the way, let me make the most of the journey to the realisation of our dreams phase’ with my husband. Who knows, that might be all that we have.
Rabia Alavi is a Dubai-based writer. For comments, write to opinion@khaleejtimes.com
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