Revolutionary Road

The only night time sounds come from the road named after some famous lawyer. Drivers pretending to be invincible, cruse in and out of earshot. Meanwhile the General convenience store sits opposite the fast food joint, both staring at each other in loathing competition. The parking lot which separates the two looks like a stage, illuminated from the bright street lamps overhead. I sit here on my tinny balcony watching, waiting for performers to dart from the sides with hats and cookie cutter smiles, singing a generic tune that will stir up that deep-seated desire to want. And there they come! Like lost souls. Slowly. They emerge from the sides. Some meander in an out of consciousness, while others in and out of the garbage disposals. Some walk up and down the front street, aimless, empty. Slowly. Times has no say and neither does anyone else about what you do or how you should live your life. Bang! Exclaims the furious sedan in disapproval. And the crescent-shaped moon smiles down on our performance, wondering what strange dissatisfied creatures we are.

I just saw the movie “Revolutionary Road”. Brilliant!
This is what I love about art and artists. They take us out of the water and shows us what we are swimming in. Some could argue that it is just a movie, or it is just a story but then what is the point of writing these stories or making these movies if not to awaken us and stir us out of oblivion.
Is society a trap or is it just “normal”. The moral of the story…you only have one chance to live the way you want. Or do we? Choice. Decisions. April in the movie says “We are special, we are out of the ordinary and we want to get out”. The actors demonstrate such dissatisfaction with the way we live, which is basically like everyone else. But then what is the right way of living? What more do we want? We want to be like everyone else and yet we want to be different. The director of the movie says that Frank is too scared to change and live the way he really wants, which is representative of most of us. Is that true? He also says that despite the story being set in the 50’s it illustrates a universal unrest. It shows the way most people live their lives. Is that true? Are we really so afraid? If so what are we afraid of? What are we afraid of?!
A woman the other day asked in response to my comment that families should be more involved in their children’s lives, “Should someone dictated the way families should live? Everyone should feel free to live the way they want. Yes. But, what about all that is unsaid. What about, as psychology puts it: schemas and social scripts? Regardless of who decides how we should live, the fact of the matter is that there are unsaid rules which exist and are enacted every day all the time. As April says in the movie “What are all these rules? who makes these rules that we have to live by?”
What a paradoxical, controversial and complex society we live in.
What do we want? We seem to have everything. We seem to seek what we want but when we have it, we are not satisfied. Can we ever be satisfied? Is it better to live wanting or is better to fall into the cycle of want, have, want, have.
Going places…Romanticizing, fantasizing, creating better lives. Hesitation. Who are we? What are we? Have we made this world too complex to live in?