The Longing of Despereaux

And now I find myself searching for something about which to write. Searching...this reminds me of a line in The Tale of Despereaux, which I watched a couple of nights ago. It was something about "longing" and how Princess Pea was full of it. It's a very difficult feeling to describe, longing. Dictionary.com defines it as "strong, persistent desire or craving, esp. for something unattainable or distant" and I think this is about the best definition we'll see.

Everyone has experienced longing, I think. I've had this feeling lately, for a while now. I'm not sure what I'm longing for...it seems to hover just over the horizon, a dim light, glowing and pulsing, waiting for me to reach it. The best way I can think to explain it is through the song Something's Coming from West Side Story.

"Could be. Who knows? There's something due any day. I will know right away, soon as it shows... I got a feeling there's a miracle due. Gonna come true. Coming to me. Could it be? Yes it could- Something's coming, something good. If I can wait, something's coming, I don't know what it is..." Maybe some time soon it will reach me, or I'll reach it. Either way.

I don't think I'm finished discussing Despereaux just yet. First, I never did read the book, so don't criticize me. If the movie wasn't as good as the book, tant pis. I'm talking about the movie here. It was lovely. There are some great lines, and the film had such childish innocence, naivete and youthful optimism to it that it managed to lift my spirits. It also got me thinking; my aimless ponderings about the movie's most classic lines follow.

"If you know anything about fairy tales, then you know that a hero doesn't appear until the world really needs one" The world needs a hero now more than ever. When will our hero appear? We've pinned the job of hero onto many people throughout history, and we're always disappointed. The latest in this story is Barack Obama- he might succeed yet, but the expectations a country full of longing put onto him are impossible. He can't be everything we want at once.

"When your heart breaks it can grow back crooked. It grows back twisted and gnarled and hard." This is true...when someone hurts someone else, the hurt person is never really the same. Sure, they can get over it. Sure, their heart will heal. Sure, they'll move on. But in truth, there's always a bit of scar tissue. There's always that memory of the hurt, or there's regret, or there's a little voice saying they're not good enough. Maybe the person just grows jaded.

"The story said she was a prisoner but that wasn't totally true because she had hope and whenever you have hope, you're never really anybody's prisoner. " Barack Obama should have used this in his campaign. I, however, disagree with this quote. I think hope can actually make us into prisoners. We can hold out hope for something for so long that eventually, the hope is all we have left. We're trapped by the very thing that's supposed to free us.