The enemy is us!

If you have not seen the movies: Inside Out or Heneral Luna, do yourself a favor as well as everybody you know: go and watch these movies. I find it tragic that when intelligent movies hit the screen, they often hit it like an overripe fruit that simply splatters and slides into oblivion with only a handful of people talking about it.

A month ago the movie “Inside Out” was screened but hardly any of the so-called intelligent people saw it or talked about it. I’m hoping the DVD version hits the market soon enough so families can watch this very educational animated film about how our minds work. It’s all serious stuff presented in an animated and often funny and sometimes disturbing way that tackles our thought process, physiological, psychological changes as well as the beginnings or basics of mental illness.

Just for the record some people think becoming a teenager qualifies as mental illness, while others deem marriage as an equally infectious plunge to insanity. Actually, I’m just being funny because half of the people who read the word “mental illness” automatically tune out or turn off. It’s ironic that people can deal with “gay,” “lesbian,” “colored” but still have problems dealing with “mongoloids” or children with Down syndrome. Many churches in all its newfound state of forgiveness still have not wrapped their arms around families with someone who has committed suicide. Many persons of the cloth still refuse to pray for or give the last rites to a suicide victim. The victim is dead, they won’t know the difference, but the families who are shocked and hurting need all the loving!

If we deny it, frown upon it, won’t talk openly about it, how can we in our right mind expect people to talk about their depression, their inner pain or their suspected mental illness? How can we expect people to come out in the open when we slam the door on them?   

This is why I encourage people to watch “Inside Out” because instead of being depressing or ugly, the movie gives our various emotions and mind sets “characters” who interact from within and relate or interact to those outside the headquarters of the mind. What the movie achieves is it makes the viewer more informed about the mind and makes us sympathetic to persons especially young people who are struggling with mental or psychological changes they are unfamiliar but greatly affected by.

In many cases we simply can’t help it, don’t know much about it, or are driven to desperation as we find ourselves overwhelmed by feelings and thoughts. It can be puberty, chemical imbalance, menopause, andropause, stress, fear, heartbreak or real mental illnesses. In others it can be excessive passion that becomes uncontrollable obsession that becomes exhausting and hurting. Sometimes you just get so exhausted and tired that you simply want to get away, get a break, get some rest, go to sleep and that’s when unintended suicide occurs.

I have been there at least twice, maybe thrice in my life. Twice with sleeping pills, I almost O-D’d but not really intending to kill myself. I was simply trying to get away from all the emotions, passion and hurt bursting inside my mind that it was already manifesting physically.

The worst bout had me clutching the Bible on one hand and a gun on the other, at 3 a.m., shivering on a hot summer night just calling to God to let the light shine because I knew without a doubt that the devil himself was in the room. I survived that night because of all the prayers and spiritual teaching my mother Marita had imparted to me as a child. It was my spiritual heritage that saved me from becoming my worst enemy.

I share this because I was told by Frances Lim and Jean Goulbourn that their biggest struggle in bringing attention to their work of intervention at the Natasha Goulbourn Foundation is finding people “brave” enough to talk about their experience or their struggle. I’m not ashamed of it. I was fortunate to have survived, I got stronger and I moved on. With our love and open arms many others can do the same, but they need our help.

What I appreciate about Inside Out is that it is a movie that helps. It helps young people get a better understanding that it’s not always their fault, that sometimes the enemy is within and the better they understand the better they can tame the beast. It also teaches parents and adults that we are suppose to be the grown up in the equation and often it is as much about hugging and listening as it is about fixing things. That was always my mistake, I always want to fix things to solve the problem but I have learned through time, humility and lots of love that sometimes that’s what you need the most: Lots of love. 

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There is very little love in the movie Heneral Luna. It is violent, it is brutal but it is also a very real mirror and representation of Filipino politics, both then and now. To be honest, the movie left me wishing that some dubious revolutionary is now burning in hell, but after recovering my senses and reminding myself that I was watching a movie, I began to study the movie for its socially redeeming values or usefulness beyond art form.

If viewers are to learn anything from the movie Heneral Luna, it would be the valuable lesson on personal relationships and the fact that what may seem to be is often not the case, and that being politically naïve gets us into wars we can’t win. In modern terms Heneral Luna shows us that “Plastikan” or politically correct hypocrisy was far more necessary and deceptive in their times. Idealism often got you killed. Back then, those incapable of “Plastikan” or playing the game, were court martialed and executed like Andres Bonifacio or were slashed, stabbed, shot and hacked to death like a pig, which was the ending of Heneral Luna.

If you pay careful attention to the political issues and concerns it shows that the problems then are still the problems now and at the end of the day, regionalism, business interest, pride and ego, and most of all deceit and hypocrisy prevailed then as it prevails now. What struck me the most is that the political leadership then was as pathetic as it is now and that at the end of the day, it is always what’s good for the “Boy’s club” rather than what is good for the country. So why should you watch this movie? Because it shows you how and why “We” are the enemy!

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