Why do we miss the fresh guy?

I late saw “What bites Gilbert Grape“ and I was biting myself. I missed you. I was wondering what the longing was for. due to the fact that not his life. He was like a prisoner. Squeezed between the past and the present, between the work and the desire for freedom, cast in a function he did not choose, with a communicative he did not compose himself. I missed you due to the fact that I felt like Gilbert, doomed to my own fate. It's like I imagined that I could last my own fate. I missed the fresh guy, the change.

Gilbert Grape worked at a grocery store. He lived, as he himself said, in a city that is “like dancing without music, nothing happens here and nothing happens here”*. On the leash of household responsibilities, the most crucial of which were the care of a sickly obese parent and an intellectually disabled brother. They set him a dream horizon and a rhythm of the day.

One of the fewer entertainments was waiting for a fresh one.

Every year, he and his brother watched long rows of caravans pass their house. They are tourists, but they “always just passed by.” They brought with them the odor of a fresh life, which – like dust – abruptly and intensely ascended into the air and fell just as quickly. They were just passing by. It's like they're afraid of being dragged into town like a swamp erstwhile they stop.

Meanwhile, this mrage was for Gilbert the content of all day. He looked like a man who accepted his fate, though he was not gloomy. He seemed kindly reconciled with the fact that this “new” is like snow on a warm hand. It's expected to be, like, a minute you feel his pleasant chill, but he's about to disappear. He understood and most likely even accepted the fact that his life would be mostly filled with responsibilities to his loved ones, who did not choose specified destiny either. possibly subconsciously he missed being like those tourists—free adequate to get into a car and go into the unknown. And at the same time, he loved his household and wanted to stay with them, despite the hardships involved.

I realized that erstwhile Gilbert sometimes missed a new, unknown one, I assumed in advance that it might be better than the average everyday life in which my life flows. And I wondered why this is happening, why this "new" has specified power. I have an answer for today.

"New" reaches out to the deepest human desires

We are woven from Hope, so 1 of the forces that keeps us alive is to believe that it can be better.

The vital power of Hope is perfectly understood by Pope Francis, who late announced the Year of Jubilee in 2025 of Hope. In the bulls on this subject “Spes non confenti“ Everyone has hope, ” he writes. Hope is present in the heart of all man as a desire and anticipation of good, even if he does not know what next day will bring."

The longing for “new” grows out of Hope. It reaches out to healthy, deep and beautiful human desires – to be free and to realize its potential. It combines with infinite resources of human ingenuity and creativity. We are (s) being creative in many ways, and 1 of the conditions of creation is to let in what is fresh and connect with what is already known. The search for a “new” is an expression of modern pilgrimage, the desire to go on a journey to a better fate, an image of the heart that seeks and is anxious.

Yes, the heart of man is able to accommodate more than 1 script of the road.

Looking for a ‘new’, he seeks out what will complete them, as if he did not know that ‘new’ would cease to be fresh in a moment. It's like there's, like, a 1000 choices in itself, not knowing that life will let you to choose 1 option, due to the fact that you can't live many variants at once. As if it would not agree to deprive all those alternatives which by nature must be rejected erstwhile 1 of them says yes. It's like it wants to last more than it's meant to, even by just reasoning about different possible paths. As if surviving through a higher dose of “new” would be a better thought for life than going deep into what is already there.

The heart, so greedy for the richness of the world, for its beauty, for its diversity, that it can delight what is other, foreign, and which frequently seems easier and more pleasant at first glance. It's a delusion, especially erstwhile it's old, familiar, it's getting worse. The “new” is then like an oasis in the desert – a place where we find relief from the sineness of everyday life.

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“New” as a modern human covenant with the world

One is the desires I compose about here, the another is the way they are realized. present we deficiency patience to wait for them to be fulfilled. “Space and time are being displaced by “here and now”, as Francis writes. “We have already utilized to want everything and immediately, in a planet in which haste has become something permanent. We no longer have time for meetings, and frequently even in families it is hard to be together and talk calmly. Patience was driven out by haste, causing large harm to people.”

We've lost patience somewhere, we've soaked up the doctrine of converting to a place of repair.

Hence, the “new” is so attractive and tempting. In addition, it frequently combines with a alternatively seductive cultural structure, which for many years has been sold to us by the Western world, namely, that "new" means better.

The fresh partner increases same - evaluation, the fresh kid revives the matrimony relationship, fresh friends are a chance for a more interesting social life. The "new" is simply a promise, a kind of covenant of our times, which replaced this old and fresh Testament covenant of God with men. In the place of God we have placed “new”. It carries not only the breath of freedom, but besides freshness, uniqueness, change that comes effortlessly. Unlike God, he makes no demands. The only commandment in this decalogue is to prosecute what's new, or you'll fall behind. So we aim at "new".

We just celebrated fresh Year's. all year I wonder what the reasons for this crazy joy on fresh Year's Eve. 1 of them seems to be the hope of “new”. It is expressed even in wishes: to make this fresh Year better than the old one! Or a fresh year, a fresh me! It's like there's a power to change. It's like a change in our lives is expected to come from outside and effortlessly. As if what is “new” by its nature could just give it to us.

Meanwhile, it's February 2025. The fresh year is no longer heard, and the fresh Year's want date is over. The fresh Year's Eve fog has subsided and most likely fewer human lives have changed. So we are subconsciously looking for a “new” somewhere else: possibly it's time for a fresh telephone call? A fresh car?

We can have fresh parts of the body – fresh nose, fresh eyebrows, fresh cheeks, fresh lips, even breasts rather new.

Recently, the social media has covered hurricane news that 1 of the celebrities has given herself a "new face". Our body is being traded today, like parts of an old car. possibly it is besides a communicative that we are desperately incapable to accept the passing of time and effort to frost its passage, giving ourselves what is new. Maybe. This, however, surely is proof of the power of religion in the “new”.

We are besides easy under the illusion that this "new" is able to satisfy our deepest desires of freedom, belonging, feeling of being loved. This is how you sometimes advertise “new”. Meanwhile, the telephone is just a phone, not a telephone that makes us close. We take part in the race after “new” sometimes unaware that on this desire, under which there is so much good, the full entertainment, electronic, technological, fashion manufacture plays.

A culture of abundance that focuses on lack

The drums of the Western business, on which the principles of the European planet are founded, beat at the rhythm of the "new". We have almost unlimited choices and we are told “impossible does not exist”.

The culture of abundance is dominant, in which you have the right to have everything, right distant and at your fingertips. For Caesar's Roman feast!

However, it is simply a mostly apparent choice dictated by trends that encourage you to choose between newer and newer and not look at what was. It's like moving forward.

Under this richly set table, however, there is simply a belief that we cannot miss anything due to the fact that the deficiency is dangerous. So the same culture of abundance that offers us the full catalog of everything-what-you-want, at the same time directs our view of what we lack. Only then will we request it erstwhile we feel lacking.

In this way, alternatively of surviving the possible of a gift and watching what we have, we live the possible of a deficiency and look like we don't have.

And this is simply a real image of reality. Fear of deficiency makes us take part in a race that inflicts rape on our nature. It's been so long that we don't even realize that life could look different.

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“New” is not the natural rhythm of life

The pace set by the pursuit of a “new” is in fact an attack on our freedom. The "new" is by nature temporary and is immediately replaced by the newer. “New” consumption is like eating sweets: it gives short-lived, intense times of pleasure, but after a while you are even more hungry. It is besides against the normal, natural rhythm of life, which is mostly based on repetitiveness, routineity, ordinaryness.

We request a fresh one, that's true. It provides us with developmental impulses.

Above all, however, we request predictability, repeatability, constancy, due to the fact that this is our intellectual structure.

To make a safe relation with a parent, a kid needs a regular, repetitive rhythm of closeness, feeding, sleeping, consequence to childhood emotions. As we age, we become more flexible, but we inactive request rhythm.

This simple rhythm, without the wonders of the “new” one, is besides based on the rhythm of the Church. Not without reason most of the liturgical year, due to the fact that as many as 34 weeks is the alleged average period, in which calmly and without Christmas fireworks we live our lives. Thus the Church shows that the average is the norm, not the opposite.

“You blink and shine”

In 1 of the last scenes of the film, we hear Gilbert talking to his mother:

– You're my knight in shimmering armor. You know that? – says the mother,
– Gilbert asks,
– No, you're blinking. You blink and shine."

I think she was talking about interior reality. She knew well that Gilbert had a heart that could shine love and sense despite surviving in a planet full of gray, ordinary, even unpleasant regular responsibilities. In a planet that passes by everything new.

"New" can be important, beautiful and needed. Good thing it is, due to the fact that it revives, motivates, forces to search answers to emerging questions.

Let only the delight of the “new” do not invalidate what is old.

There is besides beauty, wealth, power. The trick is to see it. Accept and love what is average and be open to what is fresh is the task for my heart. And anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, I encourage you to watch it. besides as an experience that not only “new” titles played in cinemas are worth attention, but in what old ones can hide an highly refreshing message.

* quotes come from the movie “What bites Gilbert Grape”, dir. Lasse Hallström