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Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
I feel like I want to go back and be a teenager, again. I want to live for the moment and for fun and for playing for hours on my Sega Genesis.
Honestly. Just this afternoon I was driving around and worrying about this and worrying about that, like it all matters soooooooo much. But then I remembered, I watched my second-favorite movie of all time over the weekend (my most favorite being It’s a Wonderful Life). The movie is Life is Beautiful, which is actually a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life, but I still give the nod to the Jimmy Stewart classic because it’s tied to so many childhood and holiday memories.
OK. What do either of these movies have to do with having fun, like girls (who just ‘a wanna)?
It’s this …life is too short to be all serious, especially when I’m not at any sort of immediate risk of financial ruin or horrible health consequences. I work. I work hard. I could probably work a little harder and a little smarter. But one thing’s for sure …I could work happier.
I’m lucky. I have a cool job where I can be creative and when I’m doing my job well, I help people grow their business. And when I don’t do my job well …um …nothing tragic happens.
So, what does this have to do with Life is Beautiful? If you don’t know the movie, here’s the premise. A Jew from Italy, and his son, are put into a concentration camp during World War II and separated from his wife and he spends the entire movie keeping his son alive by acting like they’re at a camp and the whole thing is a game. He knows, however, as the grown-up, that death could come at any moment and he would probably never see his wife again.
The world, if you look close enough, has thousands of stories of people who’ve dealt with hopeless situations, or tragedies, or atrocities, and they were heroes.
I should not pat myself on the back for managing to make it through a day with slow Internet or a restless night’s sleep or because I’m only at 80% of my budget.
I should celebrate every day I wake up on this side of the earth.
I should have fun. Tons of fun. And it doesn’t mean playing Sega Genesis all day. It means approaching what I’m doing with joy and energy and optimism.
Thank you, YouTube, for having on of my favorite scenes from Life is Beautiful ready to post, here …where the main character, to keep up the illusion that the concentration camp is just a fun “game”, fakes that he understands German to translate the “rules” to his son.
Hopefully you get the point. Hopefully I do.
Don Kowalewski 
Great post, I’ve never seem this movie but wow, now I have to
Oh, it’s a must see. It shook me when I saw it.