here's the question

So I finally watched "The Notebook" today. I am probably the last girl around to finally do so. What an awesome love story. Sad (I won't ruin it in case there are possibly a couple more of you who haven't gotten around to seeing this yet...) but sad in a way that makes it that much more real. The tidy little happy endings that Hollywood leaves us with unfortunately don't replicate themselves in real life all that often. So the sadness is sweet. And real.

But more than that, there is this one scene in the movie that has grabbed onto my brain. Noah & Allie are facing one another & facing an inevitable choice. And she doesn't know what to do. She knows that nothing about this choice will be easy because it never is when the choices are about love & people who matter to you. And Noah asks her this (and I paraphrase as best I can from memory): "What do you want? Forget about what I want, what your parents want, what he wants. What do YOU want Allie? WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

How come it seems we can never answer that question for ourselves? We base everything on what makes everyone around us happy but it will never be right until we can admit to ourselves what it is WE want. Sure love is about sacrifice & about putting someone else before ourselves. But in order to get to a place where we can live that kind of love, before we stand a chance at really being happy, somehow we need to find the answer to that question.

What do you want...?

More thinking.