A moment of truth in Finding Nemo

April 10, 2008

Welcome, new visitor! My name is Ari, the man behind Aries9. Here I share my thoughts on music and life, so you can get to know me and my music. Thanks for visiting!

I hope you have watched it. If you haven’t, I hope you do soon, and I hope you like it. It’s a terrific movie on many levels.

One scene that always gets me, is the scene inside the whale’s mouth.

Marlin, Nemo’s father, and Dory, his very unreliable companion, get stuck in there. It’s already been a long and struggling journey at that point. His son nowhere in sight, no indication, even, that they were getting close, and now they’re stuck in a whale. Marlin starts despairing, jumping to one terrible conclusion after another.

In the midst, the whale lifts its enormous tongue and appears to be running down all contents inside his/her mouth to the stomach. Fearing that it would be his end, Marlin hangs on to a little bump on the whale’s tongue with all his might — while next to him, Dory hears the whale moan and lets go.

Marlin grabs ahold of her, but she says to let go. The whale told her to do it. That everything will be all right.

Marlin asks “how do you know? How do you know something terrible isn’t going to happen?”

Dory says “I don’t!”

The first time I saw it in the theater, I choked up. So many times in my life, I’ve been in Marlin’s shoes (or fins) — and really, who can blame him? Something terrible did happen to him. And the situation he found himself in, every indication tells him that this is a very, very bad situation. And Dory has been anything but trustworthy. Unpredictable and random, she’s no doubt well-intentioned, but no one to bank your life on.

Just like life.

To me, moving forward in life has been like hanging from a cliff and letting go of my rope. All I knew was that if I stayed there, hanging on, that would result in a terrible end sooner or later, if not immediately. Freefalling has risks, of course — many of them — but if you want to get out of the rut, sometimes you have to let go even if the odds look poor.

It’s very, very, very scary, though. To trust, to hope, and to take that chance.

If you’re going to jump, you can’t spend all your energy making sure that the landing spot is clear. You’ll lose your energy, and more importantly — the timing.

You just need to close your eyes and jump.

Well, you know what happens in the story. Everything does turn out OK. But only because Marlin did trust, and took a chance. A chance that this time, it may be different. This time, it may turn out OK.

It’s only a story, yes, that’s true. It may not happen to you.

But how do you know?

Filed under: Ari, Reflections |