Very minor, dialogue-based (as opposed to plot-based) spoilers for "About a Boy" in the following. Honestly, I highly doubt it will affect your viewing of the movie at all if you haven't seen it yet. ^_^
"About A Boy" is turning out to be one of the rare movies that I actually like more the more I think about it. Usually, like with "Star Wars Episode II" and "Titanic," the exact opposite was true; the more I thought about them, the less I liked them. =Þ
At any rate, one of the things that I'm starting to appreciate more is the character that Hugh Grant plays, Will. There's actually a lot about him that I can relate to. At various points in the movie, he says of himself, "I'm empty," and "I do nothing." When I think of it, I can see where he's coming from. Society today seems to lack true purpose. We do lots of things, like go to school, join extra-curricular activities, go to work, etc. etc., but for what reason? This is something that's bugged me quite a bit. We all seem so goal-oriented, so driven, but when you really think about it, it's really "nothing."
I mean, why do we go to school? Well, we have to upto highschool, but afterwards, college or university, we usually go because we need a degree to get a job. There's a similar logic for extra-curricular activities. Maybe it was just me, but I made a conscious effort to become involved so that I would have stuff to put on my university applications. Since I wanted to have a good application in order to get into my chosen university, in order to get a degree, and ultimately, a job, you can see how extra-curricular activites were also tied into the goal of getting a good job. So why do we want to get "good jobs"? To make money, I suppose. We're all dreadfully afraid of not being financially successful, of being stuck in some dead-end, i.e. low paying, job for the rest of our lives. While we all would hope to find a job that we could enjoy, I'm sure that, if it came right down to it, given a choice between satisfaction and high wages in a job, we would choose the latter.
Yet, how does seeking to earn money really fulfil us? It doesn't. Sure, money's nice to have, and you'd definitely suffer a lot for a lack of it, but the singleminded pursuit of money and all the things it can buy, in and of itself makes for an empty life. I've really felt this quite strongly recently. The work that I'm doing this summer, I've done it for the past two, and it hasn't gotten any more enjoyable since the first year. My co-workers are great, but if the pay wasn't as good as it is, I probably wouldn't have gone back to work there. Monday to Friday I struggle to drag myself out of bed to go to work, and then I struggle to make it through the workday. When I'm done, I'm usually completely sapped of energy. Sure, I've been able to afford all my crazy ebaying thanks to this job, but is it really worth it? Every day takes so much out of me, and I live for the weekends. I couldn't imagine doing this for the rest of my life. Still, I do know people who do and have worked most of their life at a job that they don't like, or even hate. And that's a pretty scary thought.
So what are we doing with our lives? Why do we work as hard as we do to find gainful employment? Or, more importantly, why don't we realize how empty we are, despite all the things we fill our time and minds with? I think that we are becoming a society that thinks that we have foudn the meaning and purpose of life, when really, we haven't. Who knows if we'll ever find it. Perhaps the knowing isn't even so important as the search for that knowledge, but since we are so confident in our goals and future, we have lost that desire, that impulse to look. As Oswald Chambers once said, "the greatest weakness lies in unguarded strength." We think that we know how to find fulfilment in life, and that certainty blinds us to the dangerous and sad lack of truly meaningfully lived lives.
