I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie ‘Frozen.’ Frozen is an an entertaining wonderland of music backdropped against stunning visual design. I caught myself enchanted watching the characters struggle with love, personal setbacks and subsequent victories. Overall, Frozen was eloquently laid out.
Frozen reminded me of another Disney product: Beauty and The Beast. In Beauty, Gaston sings:
The Beast will make off with your children
He’ll come after them in the night
No!
We’re not safe till his head is mounted on my wall!
I say we kill the Beast
Kill him!
Why? Why was it so necessary to ‘… kill the beast?‘ I simply don’t get it.
A striking theme throughout history is of humanity’s ability to overlook the stupid. I’m amazed how villagers in both Frozen and Beauty easily crumbled against the tsunami of hatred. How often has society looked upon group racism and innuendo by saying, “Yeah, I concur with that … let’s go beat’em up.” If you think I’m wrong, one needs to look no further than the Kurdish and Shiite in Iraq, any form of ethnic cleansing, the Ku Klux Klan or the myriad of not so hidden political agendas of elected officials. All of us are responsible for ‘ball-and-chaining’ sensibility and love, only to become enslaved by the onslaught of stupidity.
Often times, in a war of ideas people become casualties. For instance, some claim bombs kill people while others claim guns kill people. But looking head-on into the soul’s root, people kill people. And the trigger is thought … that small space in-between the brain’s cell structure where ideas of love, peace, anger and bias originate.
From a Buddhist perspective, there are many lessons Frozen and Beauty offer.
- Stop spending time with the wrong people. Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.
- Stop running from your problems. Face them head on. Yeah, it won’t be easy, but there is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. We must face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
- You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
- The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
- Stop worrying so much. Remember ‘Seven Years in Tibet?’ Dalai Lama’s quote rings true today as it did then. “We have a saying in Tibet: If a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can’t be solved, worrying will do no good.“
Become unfrozen and unshackled of others people opinions.