Not holding back

One of my favorite pastimes is going to the cinema with a couple of friends to watch a good film. After I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes this summer I came home acting like a monkey. I actually tried to jump up a tree and climb around swinging from one branch to the next. If I get really into the movie, it can seriously affect my behavior. Perhaps I turn into a primate, or maybe everything I'm thinking suddenly is put to a romantic melody as I drive home, or I could pull out my sleek Smith & Wesson as I walk through a dimly lit street in suburbia. I take my movie watching pretty seriously. After Apes I ended up scraping my knee. So maybe I'm no chimpanzee. My life does not have a joyous ensemble of friends popping out of nowhere to sing with me throughout the day. But I can dream. I like to imagine I could do all those things.

Last night my buddy and I went to see The Debt. The movie was solid. I have a new celebrity crush on Jessica Chastain (who was also in The Tree of Life and The Help this year). In this movie she and a couple of guys are Israeli secret agents on a mission in Berlin. It was very fitting then for me to leave thinking I was some international mastermind able to speak a zillion languages and hop around from one country to the next to complete the mission I'd been given. Oh, but then maybe I could be. It's certainly more feasible than turning into a talking ape. Maybe I can connect with this theme a bit more realistically. The international spy genre is an appealing one for a lot of guys, and it resonates with me a lot too.

By next Tuesday I'll have arrived at my new apartment in Europe, right off the Bosphorus River as it pours into the Sea of Marmara. Most likely I'm not going to have a handgun nor will I have become a badass martial arts fighter. But just knowing that I'm going to be abroad makes me want to become better at everything I do. It's an opportunity to start fresh and develop new habits and ways of living. I want to speak every language a little bit more fluently, to run faster, to be more spiritually grounded and attentive, to take better quality photos, and to create more art. I also want to learn something completely new, like to play the piano. Whatever my "assignment", I want to give it my all. I want to live in a such a way that when I look back on these days I know I lived them to the absolute fullest. I may not be on a classified mission for the government, but I am on a mission. My mission is to live life with such drive and significance, so passionately and compellingly, that it begs a seemingly fictitious movie-like, supernatural explanation.