Tonight I watched a Japanese movie called We Couldn’t Become Adults. It’s about a man in his 40’s who reminisces about his youth after seeing a former lover’s facebook page, realizing her life had continued without him. I watch everything without subtitles so I only understand about half of what is being said but even with that it’s amazing how much can be picked up. I can’t say that I loved the movie as a whole but it did do an amazing job of capturing that wistful melancholy that comes with aging, and the feeling that many lives have passed us by while we stared up at the stars. Perhaps I’m somewhat strange but for me that feeling has persisted in ebbs and flows since I was a teenager. I remember getting lost in nostalgic grief as I remembered times I shared with people only a few years prior, thinking that there was a gulf of time between the past and present. Now I’m in my mid thirties and I often get lost in crystal clear rememberances of times that are older in years than many of the people I work with. I think one of the things that We Couldn’t Become Adults did most successfully was depicting the shift in tone as you age into middle life. When you are young there is an immediacy and vitality to everything you do which slowly seeps out of you as you grow into your crystalized adult self. You see the world with such vivid colors and the novelty of experience washes over you like heavy rain. As you age your senses dull and you take things in with hesitency and knowing trepidation. You have been hurt. You have been scarred. Those scars keep the newer, more shallow wounds from stinging too greatly but they also make you resistance once to those once novel happenings. Maybe I;m simply growing cynical with the years. Maybe I’ll expound more tomorrow.

Today I learned the Japanese words for:

1. 飛び飛びーscattered here and there
2. 生まれ変わるーto make a fresh start

These both seem relevant to what I was feeling while watching that movie.