Back when I was filling college applications, a common question I had was, “What’s your favorite movie?”



Dead Poet’s Society.



That was, and still is, and likely will forever be my favorite movie. I have seen many other movies that I loved. But none has come near this one. This movie touches my soul and reminds me of so many important things:



Make your days count. Your time on this earth is limited. Sooner than you think, it will all be over and you’ll be food for worms. How are you going to make your days count? Make your life extraordinary.



Change your perspective. Look at things from a different point of view. Things don’t look the same everywhere. Don’t think about what they are thinking. What are you thinking?



Don’t let your poems be ordinary. They can be about simple things. Yet they can still be deep. Just don’t let them be ordinary. What will your verse be?



Find your own way of walking. Don’t imitate others. Make up your own way. Find your walk. Learn to think for yourself.



And now that I am a mother, I see deep, poignant points for parenthood.



Sometimes your kids think everything inside them is worthless and embarrassing. Sometimes it’s not just when you’re kids. But during those early teenage years, this fear can be paralyzing. It is so strong and it should not be ignored or not taken seriously. It is real.



Listen to your kids. Let them show you who they are. Don’t chalk it up to passing whim. Look for the passion. Believe it. Let them see your faith in them. They might be young but they are not stupid. They deserve your respect.



Your kids are not here to live the life you imagined. Don’t put pressure on them. The sacrifices you made were your choices, not theirs. They are here to live their own life. Make their own choices. Walk their own path. Let them. Even better, hold their hand. Support them.



I think in so many ways, teenagers are more fragile than babies. And yet we don’t remember that. We take care of babies so diligently. But we are often infuriated with our teens. I truly hope that I can remember this when my kids are teenagers.



A teacher can make a permanent different in your kid’s life. Choose your kid’s teachers carefully. And be thankful for the good ones. They are rare. Very rare.



All from a two-hour movie. How could it not be my favorite?



All I needed to hear was in the first fifteen minutes: seize the day.

The complex where I live has a small movie theater and they show movies twice a week for free. One of last week’s movies was The House of Sand and Fog. I haven’t read the book and I knew the plot was depressing so I hesitated a lot but in the end, I went.

I don’t want to give away anything in case you are reading this and still plan to see the movie, but the basic point of the movie is that this woman’s house gets seized because of some mail she never opened and another person buys the house with the intention of selling it at several times the price. The woman wants her house back but the new owner is unwilling to sell it back to the city at the price he bought it at so the two parties both become obsessed with the house which leads to all sorts of unfortunate events and a very sad ending.

Both parties have their reasons for wrapping up large quantities of hope into the house and it affects their point of view so strongly that they can’t see clearly. The movie is an interesting moral dilemma and I don’t want to talk about which side was right because I know that the original novel goes a lot more in depth as far as the backgrounds of each party and their motivations behind wanting the house. What amazed me was how one thing can distort our lives so drastically. No matter how sensible a person is, some weird event can turn the person into an unreasonable being.

We take our hopes and dreams and realize them in a single material thing. Suddenly that one job is the answer to all of our problems. Or that one partner. That one car. The house. That piece of clothing. It’s a must and there are no alternatives. That’s what we’ve been waiting for all along. The fact is, no one thing will ever solve all of our problems and no one thing is the answer to our future happiness. We, as humans, adapt amazingly quickly and what seemed crucial in one moment becomes ordinary the next. As soon as we achieve, or purchase, it, it loses its value. Now we want the next thing. We lose perspective so quickly.

The movie made me want to teach myself that no one thing in life is so important. There are and always will be other alternatives. There’s no one dream man, no one dream job, no one dream house. Sure some jobs are better than others for me and some houses are more to my liking than others. But if I miss out on the one I wanted, there’s always another somewhere else within my reach. There’s no reason to get so caught up in this particular one. None is worth ruining my life over. None is worth losing my sense of self over. I’m all for trying my hardest to get something that I value.

But I think it’s crucial to keep it all in perspective.

When I go to the movies, I like to sit in one of the first five rows. Not the first or second row since that hurts my back but as close up as I can without damaging my neck or eyes. Most people I know like to sit in the middle or at the back. When my mom and I go to the movies, we sit in different spots. Jake used to like the middle, as well, but now he sits up front with me. I think he might have even grown to like it.

When you go to a movie and sit at the back of the theater, you watch the movie. But when you sit up close, something magical happens, you experience the movie. Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe all you get is a headache. But I do. For the next hour or two, I fall into the world of the movie. I feel like I am watching the movie from inside, as if I am in the living room with the characters. As if I can touch the emotions in the room. For the duration of the film, I am no longer present in my world. I am fully and completely in the movie. This might explain why I refuse to watch horror movies.

You might think I’ve lost my mind. But the same thing happens to me when I read. The first fifty pages of a book feel like I’m reading it and the rest feel like I’m living it. I am right there with the main character. The people’s lives mix in with mine. I wake up in the morning and wonder about them. I feel like I know them. I fall into the book.

Maybe this happens because I tend to read books in large chunks of time. I will sit and read for five hours straight. During such a long time, it’s easy to leave my world and fall into theirs. When I finish the novel, I miss the people in them. It takes a few days for the effect to ware off. Until I realize that it was a book. A world constructed in the writer’s imagination. In my imagination.

That’s why I love reading. That’s why I love the movies. I get a tiny opportunity to glimpse into someone else’s life. To suspend mine for a brief period. To experience life as I might never get to. It’s a momentary escape. But it’s so much more.

Next time you go to the theater, try sitting up front. Row four is my favorite. Let yourself go. Try falling in. And let me know how it goes.

About four years ago, I decided I wanted to write a novel. I honestly can’t remember where the original idea came from and why I thought it was a good one. Since English isn’t my first language, I decided that my first step should be to perfect my grammar. I scoured the web sites and the bookstores. I read everything I could. I took notes.

It appears good grammar doesn’t make you a good writer.

I moved on to the writing books. I researched what people recommended. You name it, I read it. From the cheesy, encouraging to the step-by-step, practical. I spent my free minutes devouring the books, trying to motivate myself. I read so much that I had no time to write.

It appears reading books on writing doesn’t make you a good writer, either.

I then joined a few online writing groups. I signed up for some of the classes. I wrote my first paragraph. I posted it online and waited anxiously for other people’s feedback. I reread my paragraph hundreds of times. I refreshed the screen at least ten times a minute. I analyzed the reviews. If they said good words, I figured they must be unqualified to judge fiction. If the words were harsher, I was convinced those people were the people to trust.

Somehow, self-deprecation didn’t work, either.

I chose a few of my closest, most productive, most determined writing buddies and we started a small novel-writing team. I was scheduled to be in Japan for work and I had my nights and weekends to myself. If all this free time didn’t do it, nothing would. We each followed the same steps and promised to post about a chapter a week. It started with good intentions. Out of the six of us, only two people actually finished their novel in those six months.

Time wasn’t the problem.

Defeated, I signed up for a real-life course at NYU. I also decided to start fresh and worked on my second novel during the course. If my first one never got completed, that was okay. That one was not good anyhow. The course was three months long and I wrote what I had to for each assignment. Not a word more, not a word less. In reading my writing, my teacher didn’t cry out “Wow, where have you been all these years?” but she also wouldn’t tell me how much I sucked so I’d be put out of my misery.

The published teacher or the “real” writing class didn’t do the trick.

So I stopped writing. I put the novels aside. I didn’t have time. I just wasn’t good at writing and that was that. It was pointless to pursue something that just wasn’t meant to be. I put it out of my mind.

Or so I thought.

Two days after I quit, I woke up with thoughts of my third novel. An idea that had come to me whilst I was writing the second one. I dreamt about the new book three days in a row. I went back to my old writing and realized I’d written over 40,000 words on my first novel and at least half of that on my second one. Neither of them are enough for a novel and most of the writing does truly suck. But it all comes down to one fact: I want to do it. I like to write and it makes me happy. So I needed to find a way to keep writing fiction. And two days ago it hit me: Maybe I could stop thinking that I sucked and actually sit and write everyday. Maybe the little voice in my head was doing more damage than all the bad critics in the world. Maybe it didn’t matter how bad I was as long as I did write and had a good time.

Just maybe.