Alone/Together is the first movie I’ve seen this year, and it’s a love story that gave me a hundred feels. This shouldn’t be unexpected, since the last movie I saw from the same director made me shed a hundred tears, too. This is not a review of how great or not the actors were, since this is also the first #lizquen movie I’ve seen (I’m not a fan of loveteams tbh, or I no longer am). This is more about the things I’ve reflected as I watched the film.
Life is not a race. I don’t personally condone the idea of not finishing school on time–I sincerely believe that time is a valuable thing and in this case, it should be treated with immense caution, perhaps just like the truth. But I’ve said it somewhere in one of my previous posts, life is not a race. If we’re more comfortable in finishing something at our own comfortable pace, then so be it. Because really, we never know what the future holds, and what other wonderful things could transpire in the end.
There is no such thing as a foolproof plan. Again, we have no idea of what could happen in the future, and we must always be ready to embrace both the triumphs and the failures that will potentially define who we are. When we were in school, we were taught of a world that’s too ideal and too perfect, a far cry from the harsh realities of the actual world where it’s a great challenge to choose between what’s right and what’s easy. Courage fades when fear steps in first, and the next thing we know, everything we’ve worked so hard to build could come crashing down.
Sometimes, we choose people who have done something for us over those who we’d rather be with just because we feel like we don’t deserve to be happy with someone else. Because it’s just debt of gratitude, and it doesn’t mean that the universe will hold us up to this for the rest of our lives. We do not have to be self-sacrificing and lose our happiness and ultimately ourselves and in the process of giving this back.
Our passion for something doesn’t leave us just like that. I’ve always wanted to write (I started writing for our school paper, I wanted to be a journalist), and this is something that I tried to forget for I don’t know how many times. I’ve put my pen and paper down after things refused to work in my favor, but at the end of the day, I just knew I had to pick them up and start dreaming again. No matter how many times I failed, there’s just the same number if chance I could succeed, and all I have to do is just dream again. And dreams do come true in varied forms. It may not be what we always dreamed it would be, but somehow, we gotta be doing what we’ve always loved doing.
Not all stories should end in sad tears. Because no matter how many times our heart has been broken, no matter how many wounds we’ve inflicted on someone else, when we love, everything conspires to give us another shot at happiness. All we have to do is believe that all the hurt will fade away in time, and that maybe, love is the ultimate thing that could save us.
We all need something that’ll make us believe in happy endings despite everything, and Alone/Together just gave me that.
xo