Inside Out and how Empathy lets Joy "Grow Up" (and its parallelisms with Hector and the Search for Happiness)

*slight spoiler warning*

Inside Out reminds me of Hector and the Search for Happiness.

In this film, Simon Pegg's character Hector starts out pretty unhappy even though he is quite well off. He feels very meh about his very comfortable, "tidy" life. He is a psychiatrist and he listens to his clients' stories with emotional detachment. He tries to find meaning in his life and goes traveling, being the privileged individual who can afford it that he is.

I highly recommend this film for good vibes, by the way.

There is a moment in this film that keeps coming back to Hector, when he finds himself under Tibetan prayer flags, and he hears a voice saying that it takes all of the different colors. It takes all colors.

In Inside Out, this concept is illustrated through the five emotions in Riley's head. At first, it seems as though Joy is the only positive, functional emotion. I'll try not to spoil Hector, but at the end of both movies, the lesson is clear: processing, or working with the other seemingly negative emotions is the way to sustain Joy's functionality. We should not suppress "negative" things, but deal with them and let them allow us to empathise with each other, so that happiness can have meaning. 

As children, for us who are privileged enough in terms of where we live, our world is kept small and simple. At this stage, it is easy and natural for Joy to be the only emotion we come across often. But as we grow up, our world becomes bigger. We are made to deal with a lot of uncomfortable changes in our own lives, and we see the state of the rest of humanity. We also hopefully start to understand other people better, and we are pressured more to take other peoples' feelings into account. A lot of people cannot choose to live without these negative feelings as a result of their life's circumstances, or mental/psychological capabilities, or the experiences they've had.

Even though Inside Out and Hector demonstrate the same concept in very different life stages, both stories put Joy in charge, and allow her to work with the others. Joy is in charge, because it motivates us to keep going on so that we can make things better.

 Both stories attempt to teach the lesson that a meaningful life, one we can be happy to look back on, requires us to be open to all emotions and not suppress pain and discomfort when they come. Processing and going through all of them together, "all the colors", and not clinging too much to joy and comfort so much that it loses all meaning. 

Joy in itself is a dead end, if we don't put it in context with the other emotions. We need to use joy to propel us to ease each others' pain, and our own.. But only after we open our eyes and hearts to find out where that pain is.

Movie Rating: 4 STARS. Really cool, but makes me really want a sequel to feel like it's enough.

intergalactic kuneho fusée

On Monday, Beardy and I watched GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!!

RATING 4.5, AWESOME!

POTTED OR FULLSIZE, ^ = SUPA CUUUTE

Before we left, we broke out the whiteboard we got the day before and created a wonderful masterpiece

intergalactic kuneho (bunny) fusée (rocket)

We bought it after coming home from tagaytay and then having dinner at Rack's , which is starting to become a big favorite place (he tried it for the first time last year and loved it ever since - GREAT MEAT U NO) and drew these bunnies in veggienums space before leaving.

then after the movie we went around Metro department store and found these on the discounted books section.. a kid's french picture book for me and a modern filipino legend story book for him! we like carabaos.

Our trilingual relationship tickles me. Even when both of us are babyn00bs in each other's language. [it's ok, kid books are cuter anyway]

Sometimes I make him teach me French. In fact, we used the whiteboard in conjunction with the French book, making our own rules to make it more challenging. As for the Filipino bedtime story, it has English translations so it's teaching him new words in Filipino as well...

More about our weekend though..

Our weekend at Tagaytay was an adventure. We stayed in this huuuge house which was creepy on the outside but pretty on the inside, in a pretty but dilapidated neighborhood. I'm not sure if it was just the recent storm, but it had a couple of problems. 

It's mostly deserted and some of the roof tiles were missing on the houses, and when we got there there was no water. The water did arrive at night and just when a couple of us were finally showering, THE ELECTRICITY WENT OFF. But it was just for ten minutes or so. There weren't any commercial places nearby, so we just hung out by ourselves and brought all of our own food. 

Honestly though, I enjoyed it a lot. We still had access to internet through our parents' gadgets, and well, there's card games and fun stuff on my aunts' gadgets to play.. My niece Nica and I played this weird jumping bird game on the stairs and Beardy and I played card games, Rummy by ourselves and Pusoy Dos with two of my cousins..

Also Sansa was off-leash a lot of the time even with the open door, which she enjoyed a lot! We can't let her off leash with open doors at home because there are cars outside and abduction potential and we don't have a fence. But when we were in Tagaytay she was super free, we even took her outside off-leash sometimes!

here she is winking cos she knows she'll eventually be set free [or cos a cute boy is rubbing her tummy]:

and here she is enjoying the ride home, looking out the window staring at cows and barking at dogs

Anyway, yeah.. I didn't really get to write on here at all from when Beardy arrived on the 8th of July, I decided I'll let it come naturally to me. But it's been great! So great that I'm ending this with a selfie

Or is this an us-sie.. does that even exist. Anyway bye!

How We Do (best friend edition)

My friends just went home, man was that evening awesome or what.

This was the documentary we ended up watching out of a list I looked at online. Carmen asked if I had any documentaries on architecture history, and I didn't but I said I'd look for one and I made her check out the list I found, she picked four, and this was the one I was able to download. It was super inspiring and engaging. Kinda cool that they end up delving into film: Carmen and Aizel are from Interior Design and Architecture, while Pia and I are from Media Studies and Film. Woah.

I made popcorn before it ended and we watched the first episode of Broad City afterwards. The popcorn didn't last very long though. Maybe like three minutes. Haha.

It's a nice show, I think I'll keep watching it. I just decided to try it out yesterday and started downloading last night, it's pretty cool that I got to see it first with my friends. It's like, about girls who are not cookie-cutter in their girl-ness, much like all four of us. So yeah that was cool.

Afterwards, We had a photoshoot. We talked about the need for new pictures together, especially for our private FB group's page cover, and tonight was the perfect chance for it, even though the weather is melting our faces off and the fact that we can't stop laughing at everything is not helping at all.

Carmen internalizing for the shoot. "Uma-aura" as these other two described it

TEST SHOT!

Numerous failed shots followed..

We just SOMEHOW can't stop laughing..

Carmen is holding it together so much better than all of us..

Not always though

We ended up going for this one. I'll probably make an edited version but man it's late, these'll do for now.

We had some iced tea spiked with this weird alcohol thing I got from a wedding; none of us know what it is..

After burning more calories by laughing, I made them watch My Mad Fat Diary!!! And they LOOVED it!!!

More than I thought they would :3 So happeh.

So yeah that was a great night. I can't bring myself to sleep!

Last workday of the week Bea, Go go go! To bed.