Saturday, October 8, 2011

Así Es.







  "That's that." "And so is life." 
 Loose translations of "Así es."

    In being here, Costa Rica, for I think to be beyond the half way point of my stay, I came upon some sort of a revelation. Being assigned a short film project for my filmmaking class, there was lots of going through old footage I have taken in my time here. At first, I had planned to make it about my dark past with an ex, my present confronting problems within myself and loving others whole-heartedly and opening myself up to life, and the last, how I would conquer this in the future.

       However, it has proved quite difficult to attempt to structure the future using videos when all that they are and will be are captured fragments of the past. Over time, video has served me well as a manner of processing events and memories; inserting my present emotions, and allowing me to braid them together with music I have made to establish this core pattern to my work in combining real life experiences with all of the tangled strings of thought and emotion that exist within me.

       So, I had realized in sorting through the past that I had not opened up and allowed myself to experience all that there is, here and there, me and us. It's interesting how much video can simultaneously fool one and reveal to one at the same time. Being here, going through the daily motions of waking up, eating breakfast, going to school, eating lunch, walking home, eating dinner, falling asleep while doing homework, repeating-- I have seen the briskness in which life walks as one ages. When I was just a couple years ago, I wouldn't have thought of anything like this, but coming to college, making bad decisions, getting hurt, standing back up on my own feet, staying late for classes, spending time with friends, working, applying for scholarships, traveling, studying abroad-- all of this adds up and the pace of experiences in my life has increased exponentially. As it is a great thing, sometimes I have forgotten to or been scared of partaking in all of the opportunities around me.

      The realization that I came to is that if I wanted to, I could just stay in Heredia, Costa Rica my whole time here, go to classes, go home, go to sleep, wake up and repeat; close myself off from possible friends because I may label them as "bad people" when I don't even really know them--thinking this whole time that I should structure the world around me, not let in any bad influences. But I've come to understand that if one shuts out any bad from coming into their lives, he or she is also shutting out countless moments of deep, meaningful interaction with oneself, others, and their environment- and at the end of the day, life is what it will be. We can't control it as much as we think we can; either exhaust ourselves from resisting the waves or ride on top of them to somewhere new within and without ourselves.

Así es.

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