#Foreword
The Firsts in Life focuses on lives of ordinary people, introduces you to people of different life periods, reveals the impermanence of life. The heroes and heroines of the documentary come from cities and countryside, from less than five y.o., all the way to eighties. People of different ages are faced with various problems, but all appeared to be fully delighted with how life is going on. I gotta say, making compromises with life from time to time is the secret of staying happy.
Funny story, though, this particular documentary caught my sight about a year ago, yet I didn't start until this girl I used to have a crush on talked about it the other day. I've always been keen at documentaries about nature and history, but this one did give me another view at humanity social documentaries.
#Impressive snippets
#E12 It's okay if you forget about me
Perhaps, death is not the opposite of life, oblivion is.
This is the sentence leads the whole episode. The last episode is kinda special, it focuses on only one family, of which one suffered with AD, also known as Alzheimer's disease. I'm not gonna go detailed about the content of the episode. Documentaries are much better to watch and enjoy.
No words, no presents can even level with the romance shown between the couple. It doesn't require any kind of epic scenes, or heroic acts to show love to your beloved. It is to accompany her all the way through days, good ones as well as bad ones. In the end of the episode, there's this line in the narration, "he's worried that his wife would forget him". The husband was just diagnosed with tumor, which was luckily confirmed benign later. News like this did not bring him any fear, yet her oblivion has been for years. I have no idea what love really means. Maybe there could not ever be an explicit definition. However, what love is capable of was portrayed vividly by this couple. "Death gives me far less fear than your oblivion." What kind of luck it is that one gets to say this out loud in eighties.
#E9 Stay together
- What is the sweetest thing to say?
- Your tumor is benign.
As an old man said in the episode, "cancer is in the hands of fate, and you can't avoid it". One of the places that I hate to go to is a hospital. There's so much misfortune to see, that I can't bear with it, that I realized being happy everyday is as simple as staying safe and sound, having a meal together with family.
Gotta stay optimistic about everything. Mood influences no only ourselves but probably everybody around, families, friends. To most people, disease like cancer is like a life sentence. They tend to lose their hope. In this episode, there's this couple, husband of which is always like, "HAHA" even if he was diagnosed with cancer. Dealing with life is never about oneself. It's about one's family, one's friends, even strangers are related. The wife said to the camera, "it's like the world has collapsed". And yet they managed to go through the operations, the chemotherapies. As the narration goes, "out of optimism, he accepts the fact of cancer. It is the constant companion of his wife that keeps him going". I'd say vice versa, it's her husband optimism that keeps her going. Family is all about mutual support. "You're not alone" is just the kind of things one needs when they're facing difficulties, especially from one's family.
#E10 We're going to school
This episode talks about retirement, mainly about the ones entering senior universities. It touched me because my parents are also about to retire from work. I've been trying to find some thing that may interest them, keep them occupied after that. I've seen so many people getting older faster than ever after retirement. One lose his/her routine all out of a sudden, and has no clue what to do every day. It's just HARD for some people. In this senior universities, there's so many things you get to do, dance, musical instrument, poetry, etc. It's never too late to find what interests oneself. Life is not supposed to be boring after retirement. It's supposed to be colorful than ever before.
People of their age, had dreams, hobbies at their twenties. But not many people maintained these as they fighting for a better life, for themselves, for their offspring. It's the perfect timing for them to make up for the regrets. As sons and daughters, we gotta find a way to talk them into it, to talk them out of the shyness of introducing themselves. People constantly say, "get out of the comforting zone". It's true for basically every one on earth.