Two friends meet after years and spend a few days talking about career and life. One friend has had a great career in science with double doctorate and spends his time in United states and the other chose a simpler life as a meteorologist in a remote place. A life of evident obscurity and financial insufficiency, yet calm and serene.. living with his wife, books and Grandpa. 

The successful physicist from US thinks the other one is wasting his life when he could have achieved great success and fame just like him. Bend on persuading the other to do something meaningful with the reminder of his life he asks a question “Why are you wasting your life?” To which the other one asks “What is being wasted?”

I found this Q&Q (Not Q&A) interesting 
“Why are you wasting your life?” 
“What is being wasted?”…. 
 
What is really getting wasted… in life…. in career… 
Talent…? Opportunity..? Time…? Relationships…? Experiences..? identity..? purpose..? meaning…? Money…?

I don’t know but when someone’s achievement makes someone else’s choice look wasted it can start some deep conversations. 

The scene is from a 1969 polish movie by Krzysztof Zanussi. The movie happens to be Zanussi’s debut feature as well. “Struktura Krysztalu (The Structure of Crystal) is a movie that to me went through this deep, at times comical and even uncomfortable conversation between friends, which maybe some of us have had.

I personally don’t think there is a right answer to this choice. We all view life from different angles. We value different things, we get different things. Some of what we have, we still value. While some of what we don’t have, we desire for. May be it is a mimetic desire as told by French historian and Philosopher René Girard.

“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”

There is no perfect blend in the future and there was no perfect blend that existed in the past that we can get back to now and be complete.

Forget the past and future.. but the present.. the “Here and Now” is worth cherishing (if possible). I think the movie while indulging in the debate of success and waste, depicts how the present becomes so precious when it can set us free and the same present becomes such a burden when it confines us and ties us to this urge to prove that nothing of us is wasted.

The movie does allow us to pass like light through a crystal reflecting on our short comings in a very ordinary life that the society deems meaningful only when it is proven extraordinary in comparison to others 😂 

I leave you all with this Hunter S. Thompson quote.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”