Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Sacrilege
injest:
--- Quote from: David on April 05, 2007, 12:16:10 am ---I think it depends on the person Jess. Some people aren't happy unless they are constantly reaching higher. Maybe their dream is in the "reaching", and not so much in the "attaining".
Others find happiness with what they have; or at least what is attainable, like you said. They find their dreams around them; in the family and friends. Everyone is different. Personally, I wouldn't spend my life striving for a dream if I knew it was impossible. That would be stupid on my part. I would be setting myself up for disappointment.
I would love to get married and have children of my own. This is one of my dreams. But it's not possible. Not for me anyhow. How could it be? It's not legally possible for me to marry the person I love, and it wouldn't be physically possible for us to have children of our own. It' just not possible, and it would be stupid to waste time trying to pursue it.
I think dreams are relative. Some people are already living their dream and they just don't know it. That was the point I was trying to make in my post.
Perhaps others would beg to differ with me. :)
--- End quote ---
that is sad to me....
well, obviously I am not in the most cheerfulest (is that a word?) mood...so I will leave it at that...this is a question I have had about the movie for a while....whether we are looking at it from the wrong direction... :)
XX
{{{David}}}
injest:
--- Quote from: Cameron on April 04, 2007, 10:48:17 pm ---I am having trouble posting here but this does so describe myself. It is really hard to know exactly what to do to get started on your dream, what exactly to do and how to do it. But without the dream then what else is there?
Still it is so hard when I know the things I want to do and what kind of life I want to have, but I have to just keeping forcing myself to do things that I don't particular care for or have interest in now just to make some money.
It is hard to know how to get started, but the dream hasn't gone away. Actually it gets stronger and.....more frustrating somehow. But sometimes I don't know what to do.
--- End quote ---
yes, the first order of living is survival..I remember in one of the classes in high school there was an order of needs...what has to be taken care of before you can think of the other things...
if you are struggling with basic survival you can't move on to working on dreams....well... you can but it is much harder.
Cameron:
Yeah, thats the struggle, for me at least.
I don't have the time to become as good as I can be and think I can be in the things that I love to do because I have to spend time on my work.
But then I never feel good about work because its not what I really want to be doing and then I feel all guilty for not working as hard as I feel I am supposed to. So honestly I just end up all frustrated and confused ???
Daniel:
For me, Jess, I think I know where you are coming from (and so many others that have posted as well).
I know that when I went into college, I was planning on studying archaeology with plans to go into egyptology. There were a number of exciting discoveries made in the previous few years that I wanted to get in on, but the college that I was able to go to and could afford didn't really offer specialized courses in egyptology, but nevertheless I think I made a good choice. Anthropology was completely fascinating to me and the fact that I really knew how to observe people (from a lifetime of intellectual boredom I suppose) grabbed a hold of me. For three years of my five years in college I focused on anthropology and psychology courses, dipping now and then into archaeology. But what really interested me about archaeology I discovered was more studied in anthropology, namely politicial and religious anthropology. I still have no idea how to apply this particular information in the real world, though I thought I might be well suited for a counterintelligence role... but I have a somewhat unique understanding of the flow of power, through both symbolic interactions and political intrigue.
But what saddened me was that during my pursuit, my parents insisted several times that I change my major to business or something more applicable (mathematics, computer science - ick!) and could ensure a job for me in the "real world" as they called it. That certainly got me to thinking about how I could apply anthropology in the real world.... something that I could really have a passion for. I was completely immersed in celtic culture at the time, and did in depth-historical research into Ireland's cultures and cultural conflicts. I really began to understand how unique and important the Irish culture and people were for the entire planet, and how much they had suffered to keep their traditional cultural values intact. (Seriously, the death penalty for wearing green and gold). One of our anthropology/sociology courses studied cultural conflict, and I wrote a thesis for that class specifically detailing how cultural preservation programs and historical tourism could actually benefit among other things cultural education. So I thought about that for a very long time and decided to pursue an Interdisciplinary Degree which could combine anthropology, communications, history and marketing techniques in a specific way... namely through historical tourism. So I changed my major to the Interdisciplinary Studies and my parents were happier. I was accepted into an internship in a company that worked exclusively with historical/cultural tourism and I couldn't wait until I graduated. I was very excited (pumped, I believe is the vernacular.) and for the very first time it really felt like my life was heading in the right direction. I was planning to graduate in the summer of 2002.
Those plans of course were decimated by the events of September 11, 2001 and the resulting economic crash. The business that I had gotten the internship with went down, and tourism (which had been before then one of the fastest growing markets) seemed to completely drop from the global economic view. In fact, every other business and school in the area that pursued or taught skills specifically devoted to external tourism closed. I had never been so devastated in my life, and found myself in a lot of debt because the company (that had offered to pay for my tuition) had completely collapsed and could not afford even that small luxury. I couldn't afford to keep going to school, and as I was in my fifth year already, managed to piece together a degree in Anthropology with a minor in psychology. (There are a number of advanced degree programs that one can pursue with a minor in psychology). So now I had a college degree, but with no idea of where to go from here...
I certainly didn't give up on the idea that I could find something that would enthrall me that I could live with. I continued to dream and to strive towards them in whatever ways I could. And that led me into my next career, my pursuit of an online program which would give me some wonderful new skills that I could use to help people, and which I found I could quite easily mesh together with my anthropological and psychological observation and application skills. The core of the matter is profoundly human, and all humans face imbalance in their lives. The holistic life coach can examine this imbalance and help lead people to a greater understanding of themselves, and whether or not they should "stand it" or "fix it".
Actually, to a great extent, holistic life coaching always assumes that a situation is fixable. Even if only a few small changes can be made. But if you want success stories of people who have gotten places after thinking for years that they couldn't, we have only to examine the case files of the holistic life coaches that I studied under. The main thing is to keep active. NEVER give in to a situation that you can't stand and simply allow it to roll you into the mud. Make a plan of action. If you don't know what to do, find someone that does. I know some clients who didn't even know who to ask, and I advised them to do online searches, go to reading groups, or even ask complete strangers. The human question "Can you help me?" can engage anyone, and sometimes just engaging in a conversation with a stranger can shed enlightenment on the most mysterious or depressing of circumstances. (This happens with business coaching a great deal, also. Entrepreneurs that have no idea how to do something, but know that they want to do it can find advice from someone.)
dot-matrix:
--- Quote from: injest on April 05, 2007, 12:32:37 am ---yes, the first order of living is survival..I remember in one of the classes in high school there was an order of needs...what has to be taken care of before you can think of the other things...
if you are struggling with basic survival you can't move on to working on dreams....well... you can but it is much harder.
--- End quote ---
EXACTLY! This is the point I was trying in my inept way to share with you. NO one said life was easy, especially for poor people with few options. Even the comfortable don't always get a free ride. Like Daniel, my husband is student of anthropology, it is his passion, he is an authority on the ancient cultures of the desert southwest with a particular emphasis on the Kayenta Anasazi who are ancestors of the Hopi. He spent many years participating in digs and crawling through cliff dwellings and other sights all over the 4 corners area. BUT as you said the first priority is making a living at what you do and unless you have a name that is widely recognized in Academia large universities DO NOT offer to underwrite your research. So Bob teaches high school right now, which he loathes even thought he likes most of the kids, and he continues to work on his Phd and we spend darn near 4 weeks out of every summer cruising all over the southwest together and he spents a month alone on one university dig or another. Well he ever be Dr. Bob, will he ever publish the reems of paper he has produced from his research so near and dear to his heart....who knows...but it is his dream and he is happy in the pursuit of it even if he never fully realizes it and I am happy working to support his dream.
I'm sorry about your Aunt Jess and I'm sorry that you are so down right now. {{{ Jess}}}} I think you're accurate that the film can be interpreted that way if you want to look at it from the negative perspective. But isn't the point of morality tales such as this to up lift and educate. In that case I feel that the more positive intrepretation, the one we went with originally is probably the more accurate.
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