"Based on the novel written by Stephen Chbosky, this is about 15-year-old Charlie (Logan Lerman), an endearing and naive outsider, coping with first love (Emma Watson), the suicide of his best friend, and his own mental illness while struggling to find a group of people with whom he belongs. The introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors, Sam and Patrick, who welcome him to the real world."
But, I've already reviewed the movie, so let's not do that again; no, this post is going to try to get at the heart of what the film is about: Love and Acceptance. So I'm going to share my oh-so-very-clever insights about these important aspects of life with anyone who cares to read this, here goes. (Fair warning: insights are not necessarily answers, they're more like food for thought, hope you're hungry.)
Love is a necessity for life. Don't believe me? Think of everyone you love and everyone who loves you, imagine life without any them. (Sufficiently depressed? Here's an adorable picture of a puppy to make you feel better.) Luckily for you, you do have those people (and hopefully God, who LOVES YOU REGARDLESS of who you are and what you do - there is nothing you can ever do to make HIM stop loving you) in your life, feel comforted (not a suggestion). However, you need to love yourself too. "We accept the love we think we deserve." If we don't love ourselves what does that say about the love we think we deserve. Think about it for a minute "If I don't love myself, clearly I must think myself undeserving of love. Then why is the love and acceptance of others so incredibly important to me?" Because we need love to live. If no one loved us and we didn't love ourselves, then what do we have to live for? (Look at the puppy! Better?) Love is what makes life worth while.
We all know that bullying is bad (and if you don't bam I just told you, now you know, stop it or I'm gonna drop the bow), we should treat others with respect, don't judge lest ye be judged, use "the Golden Rule," etc. We've all heard these things before (hopefully) and put them into practice in our daily lives (once again hopefully). We don't call other people names, tell them they're fat, call them worthless or weak, tell them they need to figure they're life out or they'll never be anything, tell them they need to work harder, tell them they're not good enough for something or someone; no, these are things we reserve for ourselves (well, probably not all of us, but a lot of us). Why do we treat ourselves worse than we treat other people? Shouldn't we at least give ourselves the same respect that we give to others? We have to take care of ourselves if we want to care of others (kinda like the whole plane crash scenario where you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you put oxygen masks on your kids) We are backwards bullies, and it's just as bad as being a normal bully (in this situation the golden rule doesn't work because we're treating ourselves like crap). We are a million times harder on ourselves than we are on each other. We put so much stress on perfection in our own lives that we turn into hypocrites when we try to encourage others. So how do we overcome this major flaw? I don't know.
Now you might be thinking "well that was a pointless paragraph" (funny, I was just thinking the same thing). On the contrary though, hopefully it made you think about how you treat yourself. If not, take a moment and think about who the last person to say something mean about you was (i.e. last person to call you fat, tell you you're not good enough, call you a loser, etc.). Was it you? If it wasn't you, let me be the first person to tell you that whoever said those nasty things to you is an @$$hole and very, very wrong. You were made to fill a purpose that only you can do, you are special, and you are amazing, don't let anyone (even yourself tell you otherwise).
Music Break!!!
Moving right along, let's talk about acceptance. We are constantly searching for acceptance: college acceptance, social acceptance, job acceptance, acceptance in relationships, peer acceptance, and especially self acceptance. Speaking from personal experience, self acceptance is the acceptance I both desire the most and am denied the quickest. We all want to be comfortable in our own skin, but some of us don't know how to love or accept ourselves. What is self acceptance exactly? Is it just saying "Hey self, you're pretty cool, I guess I can live with you" I hope not. According to Wikipedia, self acceptance: affirmation or acceptance of self in spite of weaknesses or deficiencies. I think this means, not trying to change yourself to fit an ideal you have in your mind, but rather just admitting that this is who you are and deciding to embrace that (not just be ok with it, not just live with it, full on give it a hug). That is a really hard thing to do, but it's not impossible.
We do in fact accept the love we think we deserve. If we don't love ourselves it's like having your kidneys fail, you need someone else's to help compensate. When this happens we set low standards for the kind and quality of love we are willing to accept. It's a downward spiral and it requires help to reverse. If you know someone who is going through something like this, I seriously encourage you to let that person know that they are loved and that they can get through whatever trial they're facing. Honestly the best gift you can give a person struggling with these issues is love (and support, so I guess that's two things). There is a wonderful foundation called Love is Louder created specifically "to support anyone feeling mistreated, misunderstood or alone" (which is kind of what I just ranted about). It can help you if you're struggling with love and self-acceptance or you can use it to help others. I encourage you to check it out.
So that's my schpeel on that, hopefully you're not bored or scoffing about how poorly written it is (if you are, you should have just stopped reading when you initially felt those feelings of malcontent). The end.
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