I believe one has to put their own meaning on their few trips around the sun. My raison d’être is my desire to fall in love every day. By that, I don’t mean love with another person. I am fortunate to have that already. Instead, what I mean is I want to constantly discover movies, albums and books that surprises me.
I want movies with witty dialogue like how I wish people in real-life spoke, though they never do. Lines of dialogue I will replay in my mind later, like a song I can’t get out of my head. If you have never seen a film or show with a scene you repeatedly play in your mind later, then you have been watching the wrong things.
Then there’s music, and I wish it was possible to live long enough to hear everything that has ever been recorded. But so much new music is released every day that the effort would turn into Zeno’s paradox. I guess the only way to catch up might be if one was the last surviving human, only then I imagine one would have greater concerns at that point.
Last, but not least, there are books. I love books, but it is frustrating they always take so long to finish. It isn’t like a movie, where the time wasted with a bad work is only 90 minutes to two hours, on average. No, a book is usually an investment of four hours or significantly more. So, time devoted to a book that is ultimately disappointing is far worse than time spent on a subpar film or album. But when the experience is rewarding, it is transcendent, with the reward proportionate to the effort.
I can’t remember where I saw or read it, but Miles Davis once said the greatest thing music can do is surprise you. He followed that with, “Isn’t that a beautiful thing?” I couldn’t agree more with that statement, though movies and books also do the same for me. So, I want to live my life with eyes and ears wide open, to be receptive to being surprised and amazed by something new to me every day.