Completely Different

by Masha Dumanska

“This is my neighborhood. This is my street. This is my wife.

I am 42 years old and less than in a year I will be dead. Of course, I do not know that yet and in a way I’m dead already”. These are the first words, said by the Lester Burnham the main character in a drama “American beauty”. He used to have an ordinary rural life in an American suburb. He had a wife, a teenage daughter, a house, a car everything that might need a person, who has the same lifestyle. But still he felt miserable and bored. He didn’t love his wife and she seemed also to have the lack of love feelings about her husband. She and her daughter thought that Lester was a loser, uninteresting person, who was always late due to some stupid problems. But his phrase that “he might be dead already” touched me. Then I started thinking about life. In this film people didn’t have serious problems, connected with health, shortage of money but they were still unhappy and depressed. And everybody fought with it in his own way. His wife had an affair, his daughter began a relationship with a weird guy, who spied on her with his binoculars. It seemed that everybody had a separate life although they were living together as a “happy” American family. That’s what I thought about. For us it is better to have a similar to each other life but be miserable than decide to change something in it and not to be afraid to differ from the average people. Everybody wants to believe that he/she is a unique person but instead of it we continue to live in a common way that people used to live long time before us. So where is this uniqueness? I don’t want to encourage people to do something extraordinary but at least we should think about it. 

When Lester found out that his wife cheated him, he started making some changes in his life. As Lester understood that he started thinking about his own life and his own pleasures and in general about himself. Lester knew that when he was young he had different expectations about his future. That’s why he changed his life and the way of thinking. He wasn’t that shy and awkward guy any more. He was a new man with his own dreams, wishes and even desires. The main character of the “American beauty” changed himself when he understood that nothing actually held him to continue to live as everybody else before.
This critical moment helps us to make a review of our life and makes us to think about it. Whether we live in a way that we wanted or it is completely different from our expectations and actually we don’t want to live in such way. It may sound strange but it is true. This routine life takes away our time, it makes us forget our previous plans and dreams. People just live in a way that had our parents. And we forget that some time ago we couldn’t understand why the hell our parents chose that instead of  things that they really wanted to do. And now it is our turn. I can’t say that it is bad but as for me it is definitely not good. People may live their whole life and actually not really understand what it is. To live. To do what you like and not what you have to do in a way that it is more convenient for somebody else. There are a lot of circumstances like family, lack of money, important connections, health that don’t allow us to do what we want. Or we can just think that they don’t allow us to do what we want. So my main point is – do we really live in a way that we want? Do people actually live and not just exist on this planet? To live and to exist are different things and as for me people forgot the difference about them. I can’t say that I am actually living my life. But at least I try to do that. Of course, I make some mistakes, but who doesn’t? I wish everybody would think more about their life in a way whether people are satisfied with it or not and have a courage to change it. The main hero of the “American beauty” discovered that courage in himself and took up his life. Lester did what he wanted, went to gym, changed his appearance and finally felt happiness and beauty in everything that was around him.