Reflections On Life: The Worst Person In The World

There are rare moments in our lives when we suddenly wake up to life. The light flicks on, sound bursts in, colours flare, blood rushes, you are part of the world and you feel and experience it all, with one moment. I felt it today when I saw the film 'The Worst Person In The World'. Here was a film which delved right in to what it means to be alive. To sit with the uncomfortable and the ambiguous. To be passionate and dejected in the same breath. Lost and present in the same heart. These are the questions we all ask, yet seldom dare to listen for the answers. Chasing more, wanting more, searching for the fairer greener path and, in so doing, rejecting and denying the path we are already on.

How can we be here, when we always want to be there? How can we feel alive when we are always resisting what is strange, uncomfortable, painful and unfamiliar? As if we could move through life, flawless and unwounded, with no battle scars. It could never be so. What does it mean to be alive? What gives our days meaning? Is it love? Our jobs? How we feel? How many houses or children we have? This film raises all these issues from the grave of our consciousness and forces us to confront them. I saw so much of myself in Julie. Longing for greatness, longing to matter, to find a great love but uncertain of all of it. And does it matter? Does it matter how I feel about it or only that it is done?

Julie (Renate Reinsve) has two loves and both are wildly different. You can have so much time with someone and be wholly disconnected from them and yet a few minutes with a stranger (Eivind, whom Julie meets by chance when she crashes a wedding reception) can make you feel so alive and be charged with chemistry. Which is the richer? I suppose meaning is just the stories we tell ourselves. And though we spend our lives searching for it, it is only found retrospectively. We only know it after it is gone.

Life is full of so much complexity and contradiction. As are people. Aspiring to greatness and connection and yet longing for simplicity and peace. Wanting to - no, needing to embrace all that life has to offer, to just BE in the moment and yet, knowing that it will all end. Not wanting to waste time, desperate to do something that matters. I think it's the conflict of ego and the soul. We chase meaning and something greater than ourselves to soften the blow that is the knowledge and fear that someday we will die. This will all end. It's a blessing and a curse. I fear if I overcome this fear of death, of chasing more, then I'll just peacably be here. Live in a hut on a hill, just happy and then die. Of no value to this world other than my own contentment.

That fear, I believe is what drives us to achieve but it also consumes you. The ego can take over and in reaching so high, like Icarus, you'll singe your wings and miss what it is to be present, to be here, to be alive.

To listen to the rain, feel the heat of another's skin as you dance close together, the rustle and soft scrape as you turn the page of your favourite book, the taste of coffee, sharp and warming on a cold morning as the sun dazzles gold through the window, the smile you share with another stranger on the train at the end of a long day. All these small, miraculous moments that make life. That you'll miss when you're chasing something you deem bigger and better, outside of your self. Running from fear and doubt. I guess the trick is to notice the difference. Balance the two. Try for things, without becoming a tyrannical meglamaniacal arsehole, and be fully present and embodied in your life, without missing the opportunity to do something wonderful with the time you have been gifted. It's all going to be okay. This is life and it's messy and glorious and longing for your embrace. Don't wait.