Ambition and Change

I watched “Memoirs of a Geisha” this evening.  Oddly enough, it is one of my favorite movies.  If you know me well then you would know that being a big scifi fan, this is in a genre that is leaps and bounds away from what I normally watch.

In case you haven’t seen it, Memoirs is about a little Japanese girl in the 1930’s and 1940’s named Chiyo who is from a poor fishing family.  At the age of 9 Chiyo is sold to a Kyoto Geisha house.  A Geisha was considered to be a living piece of art in Japan at that time.  Geisha excelled in the arts and social graces.  They were invited to parties to entertain the guests with music, art, and social commentary.  In a way it was a style of celebrity in Japanese culture.  At the Kyoto Geisha House Chiyo endures a harsh life as a slave until one lucky opportunity enables her to become the most renowned Geisha in all of Japan.  Unfortunately it is a short-lived fame because WWII comes along and well, you know how Japan turned out from that.   A couple years after the war, she comes back and finds that the whole world of the Geisha has changed.  After the war a Geisha is no longer a cultural icon but a simple whore who entertains American soldiers.  At this point she realizes that things will never be the way she remembered them.  At her saddest moment, she has the opportunity of a lifetime yet again.  The man who she has always loved and helped her to become a Geisha in the first place finally takes her hand in marriage.

There are many themes that this movie speaks to but there are a few that really stick out to me:

1.    Chiyo worked very hard in spite of her circumstances
Chiyo was put into a situation that she did not choose.  In spite of her situation, she took hold of an opportunity.  Once Chiyo was finally given the opportunity to become a Geisha, she was behind the other children.  She worked very hard to become the top Geisha in the country.  Oftentimes I feel like I have all these great ideas of things I want to do with my life, but I do so many other things that when I get home and have the opportunity to work on those things, I have no energy to do them.  Between being a college senior, working at my church, and working at the radio station, I am oftentimes too tired to even exercise.  The other things take a back seat even further and I am often left feeling like opportunities are slipping through my fingers.

2.    Chiyo did not create something new, she became the best at what already existed.
I often feel like I want to do a podcast or more work on this blog, but I question the worth because, as it is often said in the media world. I feel like I am just adding noise to the current signal instead of creating a new one.  What is the point of doing something that has already been done?  If Chiyo believed that she would have never become what she did.  She worked very hard on what she did and became the  new thing because she was unique and talented in what she did.

3.    Other people do not always have it better.
If people saw how Chiyo lived once she became a Geisha, they might have thought that she had a perfect life with everything handed to her on a silver platter.  Having watched the movie I know that this is not true.  Chiyo lived in poverty until she was nine only to be sold as a slave.  Until she was a teenager she was a servant and was often blamed for things that were not her fault (and subsequently whipped for them).
I know that I tend to look at other people and think that they must have it all together (Everyone does in reality).  But the truth is that we all have things in our lives that we are not proud off.  Even the person who appears to have it all has those private moments where they are sad, lonely, or more.  So do not focus on what you cannot do.  Instead, focus on what you can and become the best at it that you can.

4.    Things will change; you can stay in the past, or move on.
When Chiyo comes back she sees a world completely different from the one she left.  At first she has a hard time accepting this new world and in reality, we as the viewer do also.  She eventually comes to the realization that although things change, they are not always for the worse, just different.
We as the viewer experience things in the same way.  I know so many people who live their life everyday wishing that things were like the “old days”.  We often obsess over our mistakes and regrets from the past so much that we do not enjoy the present.  As Pumba in “The Lion King” says, “You’ve got to put your behind in the past.”  He had it backwards but I’m sure you get the point.  Move forward and learn from your mistakes, but do not let them take away any more of your life than they already have.

So I know that movies are Hollywood’s take on real life and from what I hear, this movie is nothing like the book.  In spite of that, I think that there are some real life lessons to be gleaned from this movie.  The viewer experiences Chiyo’s climb to success and her fall from a perfect life and feel the emotions that come along with it. There are only a few movies that inspire me to be more than who I am.  This is one of them.