"Lady in the Water"--a review of sorts...and other stuff

Well...I watched this movie tonight. I am a die-hard M. Night Shyamalan fan and somehow didn't really believe (no matter what I'd been told) that I should prepare to be disappointed by this film. Sometimes you should trust your friends. I was disappointed. Frankly, I hated the movie. The only thing that kept me watching to the end was the unrealized hope that somehow, somewhere, Mr. Shyamalan would redeem himself and show some brilliance. Bleahhhh.

However, I DID watch all the miscellaneous "special feature" stuff and was pleasantly surprised. The man truly IS a genius, even if I'm not catching the drift of his "geniusness" in this movie. Maybe it's just because I'm sick and there's too much...well, nasty stuff, clogging up my head right now for me to see past the surface into the murky waters (ha!) of this movie. I found it very interesting, however, to hear Shyamalan talk about the meaning behind the movie--again and again, he (and other cast/production members) emphasized that things (and people) are not always what they seem...you peg someone as what you think they are (their role in life, that is) and they turn out, in the end, to have a different role than what we expect.

That really caught my attention, because I've been thinking a lot lately about the life roles we (or even other people) put ourselves in...and the reasonings behind those reasons. Do we become what we think people expect us to become? Do we abandon the purposes for which we are created just because we're trying to "fit in" to society's expectations? Someone else's "script"? Someone told me yesterday that he's been living his entire life, trying to anticipate what other people expect him to be, so he can "become" that person when dealing with them, instead of being himself. He's tired of playing all the parts...and is just now getting a glimpse of who he "really" is--and his may not be a personality that will mesh with the masses, but if it's who God created him to be, what's more important?

And then I turn my eyes to myself. Am I being true to the heart God created in me? In some ways, yes, but in many ways, no. I wonder, almost on a daily basis, what's really important about staying in my job another 3 years just so I can have free insurance and a "full" (don't even get me started on that...) pension when I retire. The practical nature in me says it's "only" 3 years, but I'm not even guaranteed tomorrow.

I hope that, if God speaks specifically to me next week and tells me to quit my job and go to a far-flung (or even not so far-flung) mission field, I would hear and be obedient, but what if it's not even as "big" as that? What if one of my secrets is I would REALLY like to be an airline flight attendant? (Not so secret anymore, eh?!) What if that's truly part of the nature God created in me when He first breathed life and spirit in me? What if the servant's heart He put in me could best be served by handing out pretzels and Diet Coke on a plane flying over the fruited plains?

Hmmm.