FILM.
LIFE IS SWEET
1990 | DIRECTED BY MIKE LEIGH
Don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never make it out alive.
Do you remember seeing this, on a t-shirt or bumper sticker or coffee mug or something?
Wherever it was, it’s sage advice. So many of our problems would disappear if we could just stop taking ourselves so dang seriously.
I think I’m getting better at it. As I get older. And more fully appreciate that what we think matters so much doesn’t.
This outcome or that outcome. Ambition, disappointment, success, failure. Shooting shots, holding grudges. Being so hung up on how you’re seen or how you see yourself.
It’s all a bit navel-gazing, isn’t it?
Countless selfs have lived and died before our selfs and will live and die after our selfs. We’re not that important, and that’s okay. Even the most important people in history aren’t.
The earth turns and life goes on. So it’s really just about getting on with it. Making it through and feeling alright while you can feel at all. Anything that gets in the way of that can go.
Which is why I so admire the mother-father duo of Wendy and Andy. They accept whatever comes. They deal with it the best they know how: with tommy gun laughs and compassion.
Because they accept themselves. And can extend that acceptance to their kids, and their friends, and each other, through cracked jokes and benefits of doubt and heart-to-hearts.
It’s positivity that’s real and earned. Won through inner peace. Something to aspire to.