This post is about the movie Past Lives, directed by Celine Song. Starring Greta Lee and Teo Yoo. You can watch the film here on Amazon Prime Video.
Where You’re Supposed To Be
Ideations of a life yet to live cling so strongly to those with conditionally limited perceptions of truth. The onset of adulthood and the reality of aim, both the willing and unwilling, make way for chance, and the hesitance of beginning. Almost easier is it to grasp what could have been than to make way for what is and can be. A moving on, made almost impossible by a heart yearning so dearly. Soon enough you come to know:
This is where you ended up, this is where you’re supposed to be.
Prefer to listen? Hear my reading of the reflection aloud.
Who Do You Think They Are To Each Other?
The vibrancy of youth. Its design and intention, the makeup of childhood is perfect. An empty vessel that in no way knows what is to be of the world, until it progressively lays itself bare. With the inscriptions of the heart making good what has yet to be known in full. A time when the imaginative faculties are at its most optimal. Innocence is fleeting, and so it must, so you can become what you are intended.
“If you leave something behind you gain something”
Come to find the passage of life reads almost like a book. A page to be turned by a hand other than your own. With what is, having to become what was, so the present can at all hold any meaning, and maybe something can be made of that progression. Chapters throughout attest a life lived, with each period defining in of itself, yet only a portion making up a singular larger context that is your story.
Pain, the unavoidable, bearing its full weight upon turning a page you had no choice in deciding so. Desperately would you like to flip back, and so desperately you do. A long-awaited hope now coming to pass. A welcomed surprise. A rekindling much needed. A smiling of reminiscence made present, with a hope it lasts a little longer.
Crossings
How long can a hope remain a hope, in what grows further in being attained? It’s painstaking, that collision of odds. As the two do, more evident does it becomes, that reality must prevail. A choice to be had. A life to be lived. A time to leave for one, when the other, so willing to stay.
Still it’s worth a try, luggage and all. In front of their eyes, the onset of possibility. A question if this that has come, is that of happenstance or fate or something in between. Crossings in time all cross, blurring themselves into the present reality of what you never imagined now to be.
“Some crossings cost more than others. Some crossings, you pay for your whole life”
It’s what you’ve settled into, it’s what you know. A gift so freely given. An accumulation of choices taken. What would be given to revisit such turning points once more? Not entirely does a path remain where you left it long ago, always there is a chance to try again. Bringing the hope of sunshine on a rainy day. In many ways it’s a wonder, how far we’ve come.
Life So Much Bigger
In the questioning of where to go and what to do, does one ever stand toe to what pulls so strongly within? Is it a mistake to be made or an event yet to happen? It’s something to be measured up.
The thing about bringing two lives together that for so long remained far apart, is the process of growing in once unshared spaces, or the act of not knowing if such a space could have ever been shared in the first place. Either this comes very clear or not really at all. Your story of now, against the tale of what could have been. A lingering inquisition that may not at all be as clear as you would want it to be.
There is a whole part of yourself that even the ones who love you the most, can never go. A pocket of being that they can never understand, and a part that even you barely do. The right response isn’t fixation or a mind double-minded, rather what lies just beyond belief and hope.
To The Believer
Faith – an abiding in the good revealed therein. A whole and complete trust in what we know, and do not see all the same. So easy it is to question, more honest it is, to believe. Peacefully at rest can you find yourself to be, when on the other side of what you so long questioned. The truth of what you thought was there, brings the truest love when released. See what is to come then, when making way for belief.
“In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths”
Proverbs 3:6
Credit: Scripture and select images used in this post are from Past Lives (© A24). Included for reflective commentary and thematic analysis.
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This post was all about the movie Past Lives.
