Ten years later, I seem to be more able to accept the existence of impermanence and accident, knowing that death is a part of life, knowing that it is not a terrible end, but more like an inevitable and necessary node; but at the same time, I prematurely Worrying about how I will deal with these situations in the future, how I will endure it, and how I will make those I love and those who love me accept the same concept.
The French philosopher Marcel's theory in this regard is quite comforting. He said that relatives do not die. Because relatives are not strangers who have nothing to do with you, they are not general friends, but relatives are important people who participate in your life, shape your memories, and still have an influence on you behind you. Such a person will not quit your life. Because love lasts, because memory lingers, which in itself is a denial of death. In this sense, physical wear and tear does not constitute death. Forgetting is.
Marcel is talking about the memory and reminiscence of the dead by the living, while Tonadore's film "Astronomy of Love" is the opposite - the dead spend their best efforts to stay in the world of the living. In the film, the dying professor spends three months, guessing the big and small choices his loved one will make in the future, waiting early on the small fork in each branch.
Her birthday, exam, graduation ceremony, everything is calculated with a date, and she will send an email or courier at the precise moment; the hotel, old house, and hometown she may go to, every place asks someone to prepare a souvenir; even estimates Depending on how long she will stay, if it exceeds two nights, the new letterhead will appear in time... As long as the other party has not stopped, these messages from the deceased will continue to arrive as scheduled.
This practice is not only meaningful for the living, but even more so for the dead. In the film, the professor said that he had a very, very good three months. Imagine that you can still participate in a loved one's world in some way, still provide care, congratulations, comfort, companionship, and occasionally act as a spiritual mentor to help her overcome life's difficulties, and what could be more soothing to a dying person. Are people happy? Like he said, so how different can he be on the computer and off the computer?
Of course, there are still differences. Can't touch, can't communicate freely at any time, can't enjoy the situation beyond the set... But what if these are not a problem?
The first episode of the second season of "Black Mirror" has already told such a story. If a person's digital legacy can be used to accurately calculate and restore his personality, tone, and reaction patterns, if the human body can be simulated with the most realistic materials, and if both the body and consciousness are as close to the prototype as possible, will love and companionship be possible? be replaced? Will the boundaries of death become less clear? Can people relieve the loneliness they want to escape from the beginning to the end?
These two films, and many more such fantasies, are enough to make us understand that love and companionship are temporary, loneliness is forever. But there's nothing wrong with that, because loneliness rewards you. Solitude can grow things. Only those who know how to live peacefully with it truly have the ability to create beauty.
"Love astronomy" is a simile, and its English name is more straightforward, The Correspondence. The film attempts to compare the short-lived and fragile love of human beings to the professor's profession and the boundless and eternal astronomy. The galaxy that died hundreds of thousands of years ago still leaves traces in space, and we can observe it and talk to it hundreds of thousands of years later in a time and space where we are aware of it in a remote and distant place. Exciting to think about. In a way, this is also a way of transcending time. The professor extended this idea to his love. Even if the fact of death is before, he can still use all kinds of ingenuity to talk to the living. The linearity of time, from a romantic point of view, is not insurmountable.
This is of course not realistic. Tonadore, who is getting older and more affectionate, is undoubtedly depicting a beautiful dream, so he does not say why this kind of love comes, but only shows how moving it can be. Originally, isn't one of the missions of the film to depict the world we want but cannot get? What's more, as the professor in the film said, with the limited power of our human minds, we can never understand love.
Interestingly, the film also mentions 11-dimensional time and space, mentioning that life may have different avatars, and live a life that does not interfere with each other in different time and space due to different choices. Science hasn't verified this far, but people are gradually leaning towards it. Maybe it's because it's a great comfort.
If you know that every choice is the only way to go, and if you have exhausted all possibilities in other time and space, you don’t have to look ahead and worry about gains and losses, and just fully appreciate the current time and space. The recently released movie "Arrival", spared no effort to use the naive alien heptapod, which is also the truth.
Only the present moment matters.
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