"What I need to survive is not Gale’s fire kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again and only Peeta can give me that."
- Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games Trilogy - Mockingjay)
Here's something. What you want, isn't necessary what you need. Nor is it necessary what others need. It seems obvious when we lay it out like that but often our emotions cloud our judgement and in the haziness we assume that our case is a special case. Its a fallacy known as special pleading. That what we desire within us is the best. What others want may be wrong but what I want is right.
The world has warped ideas thats for sure, but do we sometimes know how far wrong they are? We know that up to a certain point things are definitely not right, but beyond that is an area that becomes more grey that sometimes we end up adopting the safer and more conservative but still incorrect worldly values and perspectives. As Christians though, perhaps we need to understand how radically counter cultural our values may be. And when it comes to loving people we need to understand what laying us down means.
You may gain, but you never aim to gain from the beginning. Its only instinctive sometimes that we expect our altruism to be rewarded, that our efforts should be noticed and responded to in kind. Yet we must understand that to truly love, it is to lay everything down. And everything isn't just time, money and energy. It is also our rights, our pride, our recognition, our expectations, our desires, our judgement, our ego, our rewards.
Because, its not just marriage that is for losers, its love in general.
Its impossible to ever really fully understand another person, but maybe sometimes a glimpse, just a moment of delving into their world is enough. You won't get clarity, but you'll get the picture. And we'll work from there. In that understanding, we love, we lay us down.
Love is no hunger games, it is a rebellion against it.
Distance is the word of the season, and if you watched 5cm/s, you'll know they were standing side by side.
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On an unrelated note, I finished the hunger games trilogy in a week heh. Book one during rehearsals, book two before 24km, and book three right after. I didn't think the writing style was brilliant. I thought that there were many parts which seemed too abrupt or an entire sequence cut too short. The first person perspective really limited the further development of the trilogy, especially when you have an action packed sequence involving important people dying. Yes, in real life it happens that fast, probably faster, and yes its true the psychological condition of Katniss was portrayed pretty well and the way she handled deaths was important, but still, it made things too fast for the readers.
The series was good though. I liked the plot. People complained there was too much talking but I enjoyed the talking. The character development was done very well (I wonder the sacrifice of the drawback was an inevitable necessity for the achievement of this) and it was refreshing for things to not end with 'and they lived happily ever after' like how most action packed books do. I enjoyed the clever ideas behind it, the twists, the traps, the schemes, the arena, and most of all the psychology behind it.
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