Nothing will bring you back to reality sooner than your stepdad yelling at his psychiatrist’s assistant in the theater lobby moments after the film finished. He’s been having difficulty getting his meds filled and hit his wit’s end. Hanging up the phone he tells me “some people are such idiots”.

It was stark contrast to Charlie‘s unflinching optimism. A man with little reason to believe in anything choosing time and time again to believe in everyone. People are amazing, after all. 

Life is incredibly difficult. Plain in simple it’s a shit game and the designer is nowhere to be seen and the fucker didn’t even have the courtesy to leave us a rule book. With that in mind, why not yell when things don’t go our way? Maybe it’ll work and no one told us.

Perhaps in movies it’s easy to see the good in everyone. For every Charlie in this world, there are thousands of people equally stuck, equally crushed by life, that have nothing but defeat left in their hearts. Perhaps those people have lost the game, perhaps we all lose eventually. Playing anyways as if you still have a chance to win, even though you’re likely doomed, I figure that’s the difference between living and giving up.

I don’t believe in movies as escapism. Wherever you go your life follows. And theater employees look at you when your stepdad yells. And you give them one of those quiet smiles to ease the tension. It’s a smile that lets them know this happens. It happens everywhere, to everyone. People are incapable of not caring, people are amazing, it’s just hard.