I’ve been thinking recently about life. Mainly about the difference in my life ten years ago and today.
It’s crazy to think that I’m the same person who lived the life I did ten years ago. It’s not like I was some meth addict or anything. It was just different. I was different.
I used to like always being out on the go. I valued accomplishment above most else. While I would have denied it, I valued the head over the heart. I thought to prove myself worthy, I had to prove that I was better at everything than everyone else. Life felt like a desperate attempt to prove myself, and it was exhausting. And it was futile. Like a hamster running on a wheel.
To many people, honestly, I probably don’t seem all that different. But I feel different. I guess you could say that over the last decade, I have made a conscious effort to put myself around people who seek light. To be around people who look past what is right in front of them to seek out the eternal. People who ask “how can I help?” and people who teach me to ask that same question. People who look to others to find the good in them rather than the bad. People who build up rather than tear down.
Basically, I try to surround myself with people I would like to be like, even when it makes me feel like I come up desperately short.
And like most of you, every time I turn on the internet or the radio or the television, I see something about Fifty Shades of Grey, the sex movie about abuse.
A few years ago, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of the movie. Who knows, I might have been curious enough to go see it.
But now I hear about it, and it confuses me.
What is it about this movie that speaks to so many women?
I’m not going to go see the movie. Mainly I’m not going to go because I can’t unsee what I have seen.
But I’m also not going because I have three little girls. Three girls who are growing up in a culture where the big Valentine’s Day love movie is about a man who victimizes a woman. What is going on in our culture where love and sex and abuse and lust are all so messed up that this is labeled a love story?
I always knew that when we had kids, we would try to shield them from the more lurid aspects of society. But until recently (maybe not until Magoo was old enough to really be influenced by such things,) I never realized just how much they would have to be protected from. I didn’t realize that the victimization of a woman’s body would be held up as an important cultural event.
I don’t want that in my house. I don’t want that in my family. And obviously I would never take my girls to see it, but if I truly don’t want it in my family, then I must protect myself from it to.
I have to respect myself enough to adequately model for them how to respect themselves.
I have to live out the belief that sex is about love and love is about respect and respect is about compassion. I have to live out the idea that we are all equal, and if we put ourselves into a position where we are less than, we damage the very dignity that is imbedded into our souls.
I’m not going to go see that movie.
Because I want my life to be about promise and hope and light and gentleness. There’s enough darkness out there constantly knocking on the door, trying to sneak in. I don’t need to go out there and actively seek it.
Like I said, a decade ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about seeing this movie. I think a lot of the change comes from the outside influences of the people we have allowed into our lives. People have influenced me and have helped me learn to seek out the good rather than the bad.
And if people can make such a big impact, then so can culture… movies, books, television.
And if we are so easily influenced by what we surround ourselves with and if abuse can be so normalized just by virtue of it playing out on the big screen, then I think we need to step back and decide that our hearts and our souls and our self worth are infinitely more valuable than a couple of hours of mindless entertainment in a movie theater.
I think maybe I’ll just stay home and try to convince TJ to watch The Notebook one more time.
(And I’ll know he has read this blog when I hear a big old “heck no!” coming from the other room!)