Characters like ‘Forrest Gump’ need something more than kind words
Forrest deserves love, affection, kindness but most importantly a quantifiable generosity
I was having this subtle thought back when a very famous Bollywood (Hindi film industry in India, Hindi being the language spoken in some parts of India) Star Aamir Khan came up with a popular remake of the film ‘Forrest Gump’ and I was reflecting on the then published original movie, and I remember writing something on my Facebook wall as well as share it in Whatsapp Status. I love the fact that I can do a full-fledged write-up here on Medium, knowing that people with deep hearts will read and feel. While back then a lot of things people did not understand, especially the point I was trying to make.
So, happy to be here being heard by you wonderful people.
Cut to today, in one of the Medium Posts that I was bracing myself to read a story titled, “What is your favorite movie?” I pondered and felt, Forrest Gump, has to be mine. Frankly speaking,
I do not love Forrest Gump for anything other than Forrest himself, I respect the character Forrest and love him to death because he makes me believe in the human side of people.
Despite having had a traumatic childhood, of knowing things that can happen which can be so brutal, you never give up on hope. You always feel like there is light on the other side. His character seems like an antidote to How people want to see Humanity get uplifted from the present ashes and see it triumph and rise.
To bring character, glitter, and shine to the brazen dullness we see today.
He always respected his mother, we can all feel the onset of any statement, “Mumma always said”. For me and this is my worldview, I never respected if so more so, Forrest because he remembered his mother, though she is kind.
I loved these statements because he spoke them, therefore it directs faith that your parents can be the destined jewel that you think they can be.
The only issue with the movie or feelings of such nature in real life when they come, it always seems like we see good People for their virtue and kindness and limit them to that sphere. We tend to limit the extension of praise and goodwill or for that matter, any good, kind, and humble person’s riches to that limit that we think exists. Beyond which anything seems like a lot. This ‘Vagabond Godliness’, as I like to put it does not really stands up to the realism or rather prisms of reality we are wishing to weave for the further generations that haven’t seen this world yet.
Forrest was good, but he lost everything by the end, I understand that the story wanted to do an obverse thing, these sorts of stories project bearing character growth because it evokes strong emotions.
And that growth being too giving, forgiving, and letting their selves loose for everyone but themselves.
For me, goodness exists because good people choose to remain good not another way around. If we cannot carry a statement where we are blatantly stating that goodness is there and these are the people propagating it, let them have what they want, at least in Fiction.
If we do not even spare the needful and propagate essential rules of equity because the real world is trash anyway, humanity is in that need more than ever. Let Forrest have Jenny, please! Give him what he wants, because the larger outgrowth of these statements makes populist rhetoric. As Forrest says,
“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
We should have had the liberty to provide Forrest with only one chocolate, and say to him directly, “You did the needful, and that’s because you are a good man sweety, We the people of the world are proud of you.” And to capture the essence I want to add some of my own chirpings added to…
Like you Forrest, the abode has no one, for one and only the mighty laid his bare arms on you,
You became the man pure and with deep sorrow and pity, but you did not choose it so heavily, like a light feather
You did the rightful always ran with a pure heart, ran and ran, for the good and epitome of human projection
You ran because you loved mankind, believed in the spirits of it and made sure everything compassionate exists
Yet you couldn’t get the love of your life, I feel the sorrow through your eyes, my eyes.
It aches me, that despite you being the granule so important in the diamond dust, people treated you like you were desert-washed-out sand.
I missed that your being is kept limited to our hogwash theories of goodness and praise. For what’s worth knowing someone is a legend once he is gone.
Did you feel the purity in your heart the raging beats of satisfaction, Did you get something Quantifiable? Did you get what your heart desired?
If not, for you will always say you did,
But we tell you not and lay our sorry imprinted on seas, oceans, and skies,
If you can gaze from the cosmos, for the jewel that you are, you justly deserve all that you could not have, even if it meant you being born and dying again,
And as your soul whisper in the intangible air, Breaking away from the cycle of birth and death
If not you, then I seldom think who else?
Thanks a lot for taking some precious time out of your schedule to read my work. If you like it, you can read some of the other poems I have linked below. I hope you have a great day! Thanks for stopping by!!!
I Start Scribbling and You Came Back Shoving Me into the Black Hole
Roses and Thorns: A bewildering spring caught between hot and cold