Late night philosophy

I’ve just recently seen Funny People. For the second time. Circumstances aside, the movie was actually quite good, so I didn’t mind a repeat. Maybe not the best there is out there, and, mind you, the language is not exactly fit for All Viewers, but the way it’s written and played, well, it has a sort of decency to it. No exaggerated turn of events, no miraculous solutions (well, except for the whole cancer curing thing, which is actually possible, in a low percentage of cases), just regular, believable life: friends abusing each other, helping each other, living together yet having fundamentally different lives.

However, writing a review was not my reason for starting this post, but rather a more philosophical issue triggered by it. There was something in one scene that stuck with me, even from the first time I’ve seen it. It’s from one of the stand-up pieces the main character (if we consider George Simmons the main character, though in my opinion the story revolves as much around him as it does around Ira Wright): it’s about the things that stir passionate opinions in people, and their evolution with age.

While the stand-up bit is flooded by the acronym for fornication under consent of the King, the core of his words made me think of how much of the fire we have in us in our young years is kept lit in our older ones. Sandler bluntly paints the outrage that people feel in their 20s towards their immediate environment – family and friends –, anger that gets rerouted towards public institutions in their 30s, only to apparently die out completely in their 40s and be replaced by some sort of wallowing in one’s comfort zone. This picture linked instantly in my mind with another piece of script that I heard play out in two different other occasions: another stand-up comedian’s performance and a line in a funny TV series. It seems everybody is in agreement that the older you get, the more you stick to things you know, and things like learning and adventure don’t matter that much, or, even more drastically, are really just shunned.

I sure hope this is not true, at least for me and the people closest to me. I would like us to keep 'young' at mind until the very last breath we take. I would like to always cross things off and write new things on my Bucket list, and never grow tired of doing that.

Don’t you?