Armed with 12ounces of milk in the fridge, I left the baby with Tasnim to go out on a movie date with Ikram for around 4 hours. Ikram is a space buff and a George Clooney buff, so Gravity ticked both boxes for him. Me, I saw the trailer and thought it looked good. It was in fact very good, and now that I think back on how true to the title the movie was, i.e. it really was about gravity and yet it was so much more, I think the movie is actually great. Lucky for us the last movie we saw out was to me, great as well (Life of Pi, though I know FIfer disagrees).
There were some cheesy lines, but they were negligible in the greater scheme of the movie. It was a full on sensory experience. I felt vomitricious when Sandra Bullock's character spun out of control. I cried when she told George Clooney's character she "had a daughter". I felt the desperation and the sheer energy it took for her to move from one place to another to get back to Earth. And when she finally made it, I felt how heavy her first step was, once there was gravity when before there was none.
Gravity, the force, truly is an amazing phenomenon we take for granted. It is invisible, but its effects are incredible. I'm glad I saw that movie not just because it was a very well made movie, but also because it was a good reminder of God and creation. I think I am an open minded person, and I understand the difficulty some people have in believing things that they cannot see, explain or understand. But the existence gravity was only realized three centuries ago, while the solar system is now estimated to be at least billions of year old, and the universe we know of, is much older. Would people who lived three hundreds years ago think it was possible for humans to be floating around weightless in space?They would probably think it was only possible through wizardry or witchcraft-- the kind that gets the people responsible burned at the sake or flogged not the kind that gets them lauded "Gee you're a wizard!"
And yet now it is common knowledge that when objects leave the earth's atmosphere, loss of gravity makes them weightless. What else will we know in another 100 years?
It just makes me think that a lot of the stories in the Quran, depictions of heaven and hell and other matters that are incomprehensible or illogical to the scientific mind are only so because our scientific knowledge is limited. But there are worlds that we recognize now exist, and we recognize that the laws that the govern their physicality may be completely different from those that govern ours.
The movie also made me think about fear and what it is, what it does.
I have been having a lot of fears since having my first child. Throughout the movie I kept asking Ikram to check the phone in case my sister called with an emergency. Twice we got calls from the house, the first was from my brother about an unrelated thing (but I managed to go slightly berserk calling him back), and the second was from my sister requesting a Subway sandwich. When I got home, Omar was asleep and I could breathe again.
Fear is rooted in anticipation, it is not a real thing. After fear comes the pain, sadness, or relief-- the real things. Does having fear change what happens next? Usually it does not. But it does work to get us moving and to do something, something to prevent pain or sadness, so that we can just be relieved. Sometimes though, as a new parent, fear is just a distraction. I think I need to, and am slowly learning, to let go of some of the fear. Prepare and try to prevent the bad things that I can, for that I can't, I pray that God will.
I do wish I saw the movie in 3D though.
There were some cheesy lines, but they were negligible in the greater scheme of the movie. It was a full on sensory experience. I felt vomitricious when Sandra Bullock's character spun out of control. I cried when she told George Clooney's character she "had a daughter". I felt the desperation and the sheer energy it took for her to move from one place to another to get back to Earth. And when she finally made it, I felt how heavy her first step was, once there was gravity when before there was none.
Gravity, the force, truly is an amazing phenomenon we take for granted. It is invisible, but its effects are incredible. I'm glad I saw that movie not just because it was a very well made movie, but also because it was a good reminder of God and creation. I think I am an open minded person, and I understand the difficulty some people have in believing things that they cannot see, explain or understand. But the existence gravity was only realized three centuries ago, while the solar system is now estimated to be at least billions of year old, and the universe we know of, is much older. Would people who lived three hundreds years ago think it was possible for humans to be floating around weightless in space?They would probably think it was only possible through wizardry or witchcraft-- the kind that gets the people responsible burned at the sake or flogged not the kind that gets them lauded "Gee you're a wizard!"
And yet now it is common knowledge that when objects leave the earth's atmosphere, loss of gravity makes them weightless. What else will we know in another 100 years?
It just makes me think that a lot of the stories in the Quran, depictions of heaven and hell and other matters that are incomprehensible or illogical to the scientific mind are only so because our scientific knowledge is limited. But there are worlds that we recognize now exist, and we recognize that the laws that the govern their physicality may be completely different from those that govern ours.
The movie also made me think about fear and what it is, what it does.
I have been having a lot of fears since having my first child. Throughout the movie I kept asking Ikram to check the phone in case my sister called with an emergency. Twice we got calls from the house, the first was from my brother about an unrelated thing (but I managed to go slightly berserk calling him back), and the second was from my sister requesting a Subway sandwich. When I got home, Omar was asleep and I could breathe again.
Fear is rooted in anticipation, it is not a real thing. After fear comes the pain, sadness, or relief-- the real things. Does having fear change what happens next? Usually it does not. But it does work to get us moving and to do something, something to prevent pain or sadness, so that we can just be relieved. Sometimes though, as a new parent, fear is just a distraction. I think I need to, and am slowly learning, to let go of some of the fear. Prepare and try to prevent the bad things that I can, for that I can't, I pray that God will.
I do wish I saw the movie in 3D though.
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