The fault in our stars...

            For those of you who have seen the movie, this is not a review. I just recently saw the movie and it truly inspired me. If I am being totally honest, I actually first saw the movie a while ago, but I realize now, watching it again, that I did not have an honest appreciation for the story being told the first time around.

            For those of you who are yet to see the movie, in the briefest way possible, the movie is about a teenage girl; who is diagnosed with lung cancer very early on in her life. At the start of the movie, she is basically waiting to die, being sustained by a ventilator, which she is forced to carry around every single second of every single day. This to me is symbolic and indicative of not only the psychological but the physical burden being in her own skin brings. Pretty earlier on, she meets and falls in love with a boy who she meets as a cancer support group. In the beginning of their relationship, he is in remission after the amputation of his leg. Unfortunately, he eventually dies of a relapse that affects all his organs.  It sounds like a sad movie, which it was but not sad in the way you think. Watching the movie almost felt like a necessary sadness.

It explores a unique love story of two people who know exactly what the other is feeling, which is rare for any relationship. This story stands out in my mind because it does not sugar coat the situation in any way. It allows them to rely on each other and feel pain as a valid, raw and undiluted emotion. Their relationship allows them to feel sad and defeated at times, which I think is just as important as fighting back.

            Their story inspired me to write and encourage as many people as possible to not be shy or afraid to feel any emotion they feel. The worst thing a person can do is to hide what they are feeling in an attempt to make another person feel more comfortable. It is unfair for to feel like it is your responsibility to make another person feel better about your pain.

            The title; originally derived from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, is indicative of the fact that sometimes horrible things happen in life and no one is to blame. It just is. Sometimes, there is no silver lining, no light at the end of tunnel as far as you can see, and that’s ok. Sometimes, it is not so much our ability to find the rainbow that matters, as it is our ability to weather the storm.

            Sadness is a valid emotion and it demands to be felt. Jonathan Safran Foer once said “you cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness”. I think this quote speaks volumes because it is reflective of the fact a perfect world does not exist. It almost forces us as humans to persevere through the sadness and misery in hopes of finding the beauty in our imperfect world.

            I come from a culture that like many other cultures, quantifies sadness; a culture that turns sadness into a mechanical phenomenon. For example, when a woman loses her husband, she is expected to wear black and observe a set number of days of mourning. During this period, she is not allowed to leave her home or engage in any kind of social activity. It is almost as though society dictates to a woman how she should feel and how she should mourn the loss of her husband; which seems cruel and insensitive.

            I feel like I am in a good position to speak about sadness as an emotion because I have felt it in many different ways. That being said, in my opinion, when something devastating happens to a person, the literal worst thing you can say if you have not experienced the same exact thing is, “I know how you feel”. If you do not literally mean these words, it is borderline insulting to utter them. It is disrespectful because it belittles the gravity of the tragedy.

            In my twenty years, I have a lost a cousin (who was more like my little brother) who died when he was four years old and more recently, my grandfather, who was eighty-three years old. Naturally, you would think that my little cousin’s death would be more difficult to deal with, which it was, but not for the seemingly obvious reasons. They were and still are two entirely different kinds of pain and I still think about both of them everyday.

            In terms of time, there is not a limit to the number of days you can feel sad. It could be two months or two decades, sometimes it could last a lifetime. Never feel like you cannot feel sad because the event happened a while ago. The duration of your mourning period is your decision, do not let anyone take that away from you.

            Closure is a big word under such circumstances. Personally, I lost both my cousin and my grandpa while I was away in Canada and they both died at home in Nigeria. This invoked two very different emotions in me. No doubt it made it hurt a thousand times more, just because both times I felt, in addition to my sadness, a sense of disbelief and confusion. I felt and sometimes still feel very up in the air about it. Truthfully, not being in Nigeria also meant that I didn’t have to deal with my emotions as soon as I found out. It was a lot easier and more convenient to chuck my feelings away and avoid them as much as possible because I did not physically feel their absence in Canada. This is not an advisable way to deal with these types of situations, because it makes dealing with them eventually a lot worse. But recognize that there is also, no right way to deal with the emotions you do feel. The only thing you can do is what you feel is best for you at the time.

I guess what I am trying to say is, treat sadness with as much attention and respect as you do other emotions. Be accepting of it in its purest form. The fact that you choose to feel pain when horrible things happen, does not make you a pessimist or masochist, it makes you human. Remember, our world is not perfect, bad things happen to good people all the time. Choosing to be oblivious to this fact is not wise in any way, shape or form. There is and always would be a fault in our stars.