Up in the air

2011-01-28T08:24:00.000-08:00

Up In The Air

A movie directed by Jason Reitman. Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) works for Omaha based Career Transition Counseling whose contracts are in corporate downsizing. In other words, they fire people. Ryan is flying around the US over 320 days of the year, which he feels is the best part of his job. He does whatever he can to rack up frequent flyer miles, the goal not to use them but just to accumulate them to a specific number he has in his mind. A secondary job he has is to give motivational speeches on relieving one's life of excess physical and emotional baggage. He truly does believe what he espouses as he lives out of his carry-on suitcase (his apartment in Omaha is really in name only), he is not close to his siblings (although he does do a favor for his sister while on his travels), nor does he have or want a significant person in his life. Ryan's life may change when the company hires Natalie Keener, (Anna Kendrick) a young overachieving woman who recommends that the company change the nature of the work by conducting the "firings" via remote computer access. Ryan believes that Natalie does not fully understand the nature of the business, and as such, their boss, Craig Gregory, suggests that she accompany Ryan on a business trip. Ryan is also trying to protect his way of life, which now includes meeting up with a woman named Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) whenever their flight schedules mesh. Like Ryan, Alex, who he met in an airport hotel bar, is constantly traveling for work, and is as equally turned on the by the concepts of "elite status" or "preferred member" as Ryan is.

In this movie, Ryan is also a person who give some motivation talk about What is in your backpack? This sound a bit interesting for me. Backpack a simplest form, a cloth sack carried on one's back and secured with two straps that go over the shoulders. Which mean you can feel the weight of the bag easily. So, backpack is mataphor as the burden of our life.

The talk start with:

I want you to imagine for a second that you are carrying a backpack.

I want you to feel the straps on your shoulders.

Now I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life.

Start with the little things, the things on shelves and in drawers.

This time, I want you to fill it with people

Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office,

And then you move into the people, that you trust with your most intimate secrets, your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, your brothers, your sisters, your parents, and finally your husband , your wife, your boyfriend or your girlfriends,

You will get them into that backpack

You feel them.

Feel the weight of that bag

Make no mistake, your relationship are the heaviest components in your life

Do you feel the straps cutting into your shoulders?

All those negotiations and arguments and secrets and compromises

you do not need to carry all that weight, why do not you set that bag down?

Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically for a lifetime. Star-crossed lovers, monogamous swans,

We are not those animals, the slower we move, the faster we die. We are not swans.

We are sharks.

At first I am quite agree with the statement made by Ryan. Surely, it is a burden which we cant deny. Some time it will really makes our shoulder tire and hurt. Some time we do think wan to juz leave it, put it away and have a rest and freedom our journey that waiting for us in front. But, don't we think we are also the "backpack" of others ? The answer is yes. We are. Did some one just left us behind? family? friends? The answer is no.

So, if people who does not care about the weight of the backpack, why should we. Inside the backpack, some food that can feed us, some instrument or maybe i-phone that can entertain us. This are all the things that we need to be considored.

For my opinion, friendship is the most complicated things that we need to maintain. The link of the friendship is not as simple as the link of the our family. Surely, i seeing it as my backpack. But i love to carry it. I love to take this backpack as far as i can.

Friends forever.

cOloUr of ethAn's RoOm

Up in the air