The second time I watched 500 Days of Summer

It was after dance class that Rachel and I walked past an anti-cafe at Scape, Orchard only to discover that the movie they were screening was 500 Days of Summer. We tried to recall the story then and there, and I realised that it was a good six years ago since I first watched it. It didn't make any sense to me back then - while somehow I managed to latch onto its hype and merely watched it thinking that oh WOW it's an indie film. I suppose my young self was thinking that watching an indie film would be just one of many perceived ways to be labelled a "HIPSTER". Good grief I was so lame!!! But I was invariably confused at the screenplay and plot, and understandably so. I could hardly form any reasonable opinion on well, love, back then.

Not that much has changed from then to now - I didn't suddenly have a wealth of personal experiences or anything like that to draw much insights upon, but what I did develop was a belief (or perhaps more of an ideal?). I thought a lot about how I should go about writing this, or if I was in any position to broach this topic at all, since I probably can't tell anybody what love feels like or what it should be. But then I figured that perhaps it would be interesting to hear what defines love or what love is coming from someone who doesn't know a thing about love. And how my appreciation and understanding of the movie took a different direction this time around.

"Open your mind, believe it's going to come to"

I will have to admit that I am quite the idealist, at least when it comes to love and romance. I have a really soft spot for romantic movies, shows, stories and the like which often leaves me sobbing like a neurotic, overly emotionally-attached person. I would think about the story for days on end, albeit wistfully sometimes. But I found that my beliefs began to take shape in the light of such ideals. I think we all know how expectations could contend as a positive or negative thing, but whether or not they are realistic, becomes another matter altogether. Let's just say... I strongly believed in the idea of soulmates and finding "the one" (as I'm typing this I feel quite embarrassed because "the one" sounds corny now that I think of it omg). Often I struggled to reconcile these ideals because every time I start to question whether soulmates really do exist, I would eventually brush it off with a self-assuring belief that such things simply differ from person to person.

Recently however, I wound back at the same question yet again. Am I just waiting for the idea of someone that may not even exist? Or am I being impatient? Slowly, I started letting go of that notion but still, I couldn't quite get rid of it entirely because even if you didn't find "the one", I still believed that everyone would find "someone".

"Maybe some people were meant to fall in love with each other but not meant to be together" 

I'm in the process of learning not to measure and not compare things in absolutes - or in other words, to appreciate that for everything you invest in, it is a risk being taken. To stop thinking that I MUST be sure of something when we can never be sure of anything in actuality, to stop thinking that every direction you take MUST have that specific end in mind and then your goals start to conflict with your expectations without you even realising it. Perhaps it's time I stopped expecting so much out of anyone before I would have to learn it the hard way and realise that I was wrong about everything I chose to believe in. Very much like how Tom was wrong about the girl he thought was everything that was right for him.

"If Tom had learned anything... it was that you can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence... Tom had finally learned, there are no miracles. There's no such thing as fate, nothing is meant to be. He knew, he was sure of it now."

I guess I will never be sure of it until I experience it for myself, and my beliefs may even change sometime from now. But this seems to help put things into some perspective and realistically so, that you can't expect but only hope that every romance works out well. Perhaps I fear the possibility that it would all amount to nothing and I fear the things I can't explain or do not expect, which turns out to be a fault of mine. To adapt really loosely from the film, you could meet and fall for someone at any one point in time - temporarily, at the wrong time, too late or... forever. It could be just about anyone, any place, any time for that matter. But the bottom-line is, maybe there is no point in a search for anyone at all, such things are just circumstantial at best. Anyway, I really liked that at the end where Tom invited the new girl, Autumn for coffee after their interview, he promptly settled it with a:

"We'll figure it out"

We'll all figure it out indeed, we need not worry.

(On a side note I just really needed to mention how simply adorable and quaint the cinematography of the film is!!)