Commercial Decision Design

Tag: hope

  • We are all passengers looking for connection

    We are all passengers looking for connection

    “What’s lacklustre about Passengers isn’t just that the movie is short on surprise, but that it’s like a castaway love story set in the world’s largest, emptiest shopping mall in space.”

    When I read this critique, I almost didn’t watch the movie. But, I’m so glad I decided to watch it.

    The movie is about the starship Avalon transporting 5000 passengers (in induced hibernation) from earth through space to their new home, Homestead ll.

    It’ll be 120 years before they arrive at Homestead ll. Avalon malfunctions after flying into an asteroid field and one of the passengers, Jim Preston (a mechanical engineer) is woken up 30 years into the journey; 90 years too soon.

    He discovers that he’s totally alone.

    He’s devastated, depressed and suicidal.

    On the upside, his every whim is catered for – he has luxury, food, entertainment and the most spectacular view of the cosmos.

    His dilemma raised a number of uncomfortable issues for me.

    Imagine discovering that you are devastatingly alone. How would you feel? I’d probably be gutted and would, like Jim, consider taking my life. Of course, being a hopeful creature, I’d try and find another living soul … anybody to connect to.

    After a year Jim awakens the beautiful Aurora from her hibernation pod. His loneliness is so much so that he is prepared to condemn Aurora to death by waking her just so that he could have company.

    Eventually, they fall in love. Of course, she later finds out that he woke her on purpose and that her hibernation pod didn’t malfunction as he led her to believe.

    She’s shattered, disillusioned and depressed. She hates Jim for ‘murdering’ her.

    Long story, short. The ship starts malfunctioning and it’s up to Jim and Aurora to save it and the 5000 passengers along with it.

    They do it.

    Yay.

    Jim figures out a way to put Aurora back in hibernation so that she can make the rest of the journey and get to Homestead ll. She chooses to stay and spend what’s left of her life with Jim.

    When the passengers and crew finally wake up, there’s a ‘Garden of Eden’ on the central deck and a story of the miracle that happened.

    What I took from this story

    No amount of wealth, luxury and freedom can make you happy if there’s nobody to share it with.

    I think that our deepest need is for connection. It’s what makes us tick. Without connection, we die. That’s probably why solitary confinement in prison is a harsher punishment than death.

    We all have destinations we want to go to. We all have dreams. We all have plans. But as the Scottish poet, Robert Burns said, “The best laid plans of men and mice oft go awry.” The thing is that we don’t have any idea as to why our journeys take ‘wrong turns’.

    Often, what appears to be a disaster is actually a blessing. If Jim and Aurora were in blissful hibernation, the ship would have exploded, killing all 5000 passengers and them along with it. So, they were right where they were supposed to be.

    When I think back on my life, every ‘good’ and ‘bad’ event has shaped me into the human I am today and will become. I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. And, the exciting thing is that I don’t know what plans there are still for me before I give this journey up (with grace hopefully).

    Life is what happens to you and me while we’re making other plans. Jim and Aurora accepted their situation and made a beautiful life. We tend to look for happiness elsewhere when it’s actually right in front of us.
    I think life is as simple as choosing to be happy in every situation.

    “We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

    Carlos Castandeda

    The random choices we make (and people we meet) do have a significant impact on our lives. We’re where we are because of this randomness and not because of any design or skill on our parts. In Jim’s case, he made a decision to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. Maybe his parents forced him to? If he’d made another choice … say, being an artist, things would have turned out differently for him and the 5000 other passengers.

    The same is true for you and me – the so-called choices we make, or are forced to make, sets us up for things to come. They work out to our advantage in the end.

    We get lost along the way to our destinations. And, that’s ok. The side roads and detours are where life happens and where our purpose is forged.
    We don’t know who we’ll impact along the journey or who’ll impact us.

    Get lost, but don’t lose the lesson or lose who you are.

    “You can’t get hung up on where you’d rather be that you forget to make the most of where you are,” Aurora.

  • Walk The Yard

    Walk The Yard

    Prison genre movies appeal to something inside me. I’ve watched dozens: The Shawshank Redemption, Jericho Mile, The Green Mile and The Hurricane to name a few. And, loosely lumped into the prison genre are prisoner of war and 2nd World War concentration camp themes too … Schindler’s List (more a Holocaust story) and The Great Escape come to mind.

    “They ask questions of me”

    I think they appeal to me on various levels. They ask questions of me. Questions that I don’t always want to dig too deeply into because I’m afraid I might come up short. Am I a decent human being? Do I still have hope or am I so jaded and cynical that there’s no oxygen for hope to thrive? Do I have courage? Am I a leader? Will I die for a cause? Do I have a cause? Am I redeemable? Is the system so broken that I can never make a difference?

    Walk the yard with me and see how you stack up on this journey that you’re on.

    Hope and inevitability

    I’m cheering for the wrongly-accused, innocent man who needs to battle corrupt officials, malevolent gang leaders and a system geared in every way to destroy him. I’m either delighted when he gets out or distraught when he’s executed. This plot appeals to my sense of hope, in the first instance and my feeling of inevitability in the second.

    This theme plays to three of my biggest fears … being falsely accused of something and taking the fall for it, being abducted by aliens and not being able to tell anybody about it for fear of being thought mad and a five cent coin falling off a 50-story building and hitting me in the head and killing me instantly. I know, I know … thousands of rands of therapy and still no nearer to a cure.

    Can I be redeemed?

    Prison movies appeal to my need for redemption too. I’m always interested to see if a guilty man can change, redeem himself and take that second chance to do something meaningful with the remainder of his life. The redemption theme plays on my fear as well. In these movies the majority of the prison population is by ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ irredeemable. The game is rigged and the outcome is inevitable. My fear is that I’m irredeemable too.

    Benign and gracious system

    These movies also appeal to me because I have hope that the system can be benign and gracious and not mad and malevolent. So, I’m always happy when a prison guard or warden turns out to be a ray of light and hope in a world of darkness and chaos. I gives me hope that I too can can emulate these special and rare beings and make a difference to somebody who is in a dark place.

    Will I pee in my pants?

    Concentration camp movies ask questions of my courage. Would I be able to stand up against a system that is abhorrent to anything that is decent. Would I be prepared to die to protect the innocent. Could I be an Oskar Schindler who saved 1200 Jewish souls during the Holocaust? Could I handle myself with honour and decorum and not pee in my pants when my death is certain?

    Leadership

    Can I be a great leader in the face of insurmountable odds and inspire my men like Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, in the great escape from Stalag Luft lll in 1943?

    Thanks for walking the yard with me. I’ll see you on the outside.

  • Noah, Aliens and Disillusionment

    Noah, Aliens and Disillusionment

    A favourite dinner topic, around our house when I was growing up, was the UFO crash (with five aliens on board) in Roswell, New Mexico on July 8, 1947.

    That’s how you roll when you were born to liberal parents in the 60s and 70s. Discussions about the Illuminati, Nessie, Big Foot, Dogons, Sirius, coincidence, synchronicity, religion and the supernatural were not alien in our home. It was standard fare.

    I suppose that’s why I’ve always been interested in all things spiritual, alien and unknown. I think I may even be a closet conspiracy theorist. With the kind of father I had, I understand why. But, that’s for another time and three brandies later.

    Recently, I revisited the supposed discovery of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. It was first sighted by a Turkish Army Captain, Lihan Durupinar in 1959 whilst examining an aerial photo of his country.

    There are three views: It’s a load of nonsense (www.snopes.com, the rumour-busting website, thinks it’s bunkum), it really is Noah’s Ark or it’s an alien craft.

    I’ve always wondered why government agencies supposedly cover up these mysteries and don’t just play open cards with their citizens. Surely we can handle the truth?

    Or maybe our governments (and I may be giving them way too much credit) understand that we can’t handle the truth. They may understand that we’re addicted to hope. And, it’s their jobs to keep hope alive by shielding us from the dark underbelly of reality.

    It’s not unimaginable that if there really was a UFO crash in Roswell (www.snopes.com is silent on this matter), it could shatter the worldview of a large portion of our society. If ‘Noah’s Ark’ on Mount Ararat turned out to be an alien ship. Ditto. Similarly, if the Sphinx in Egypt is actually 10 000 years old and not 4 500 as most archeologists believe or have misled us to believe … that has massive ramifications for large swathes of our planet.

    So, what’s the internal story around this? In my opinion, the only thing that keeps us going is hope. It can be a belief in a higher power, a belief that things will get better and that there’s a sliver lining to every dark cloud. I think if it wasn’t for hope and a belief in something, many of us would just give up and revert to our baser instincts.

    The thing is that the ‘truth’ doesn’t always set you free but it leads you from belief to doubt to disillusionment. I challenge you to deny that when South Africa became a democracy in 1994 you didn’t feel belief and hope. What do you feel now with corruption, poverty and lack of education prevalent? I’ll bet, it’s disillusionment. That’s how I feel, anyway.

    That’s why I think governments like to keep things fuzzy. Because when there’s hope and/or doubt there’s always a chance that things will stay the same (for some that’s heaven) or that things will change for the better (heaven for others).

    Let me distill belief, doubt and disillusionment even further into our own psyches. I think that many of us don’t act on our dreams and goals because we are scared that the truth will show us up for who we are … not that fabulous and rather ‘meh’. We are taught at a very early age to have belief in our abilities. And, in pre-schools today there’s an “everyone’s a winner” philosophy. Every child get’s a certificate for contributing. But, as you know, in real life, not everyone’s a winner.

    Maybe, just maybe most of us prefer to live in doubt (or hope) about our abilities. But the only way to find out if we ‘have it’ is to do it. And that’s where the rubber hits the road. Because when we actually try something we might fail at it. And that truth could suck the ‘lewenslus’ out of us and lead to total disillusionment.

    My answer for what it’s worth.

    Let the truth set you free. If you really suck at something, it’s better to find out quickly (fail early). This means that you can then focus your energies on finding something you can be successful at. I found out quickly in primary school that I would never sing in the choir (my screeching had cats running for cover) and consequently, I would never be the rock star I wanted to be. So, rather than flog that dead horse, I channeled my energies elsewhere.

    And, you know what, I wish I could tell you ‘I’ve arrived’. I haven’t. I keep failing at things. The truth is a bitter mistress. But the hard lessons she teaches me serve me in good stead.

    I’m in a better space, more resilient and getting closer to my Magnum Opus. Right now I am the best work I’ve produced. And that’s good enough for me.