《破·地狱》+ "I Decided to Live as Me” + "Squid Game" seasons 2 & 3 + karaoke & 湘香湖南菜w sistars
18/8/25 Mon: Margareth’s intermediate reformer class this morning had more of stretches, so it wasn’t too tough on me and Linh.
Saw good reviews of《破·地狱》and so I watched it.
Didn’t bawl my eyes out but I still cried, just like how Janet warned me to prepare tissues haha. 故事大致是婚礼策划师魏道生（黄子华饰）在新冠疫情后被迫改行成为丧礼经纪人，起初因理念不合而数次跟喃呒师傅郭文（许冠文饰）产生磨擦和冲突。随着道生着手筹备丧事，眼见文哥对殡仪工作的一丝不苟，并亲历文哥与长子志斌（朱柏康饰）和幼女文玥（卫诗雅饰）相处的点点滴滴，慢慢改变看待殡仪业和生命的态度。
好多情节触动我，也会不自觉叫我反思。印象很深刻的是文哥病倒，出院后需要孩子照顾，文玥问了哥哥，但志斌却说“我的儿子是读书的料，不想他跟我一样，我得为了我的儿子自私。”然后全家移民去澳大利亚，留下妹妹照顾爸爸。说穿了，每个孩子有了自己的小孩后，父母似乎成了“二等”。我觉得不应该，但我也无法bring myself to fully blame志斌。
文哥去世前也从道生身上学到了“为了活人”的重要性。丧礼是得尊重死者，但更需要照顾在乎的是还活着的人。文玥从小觉得父亲忽略了她，最后爸爸却在自己的丧礼上要求女儿来“破地狱”（香港道教丧礼中的仪式，要来超度亡魂，助他们脱离地狱，往生西方或轮回），打破这个只传男不传女的礼仪。Very controversial，但在这里，观众是该尊重死去的文哥的遗愿，还是固执坚守传统？
片尾答案已不言而喻。我们该遵守传统，但不该是在伤害他人的前提下。我认为，在守护延续传统的同时，也该随着时代适当地做出改变，迎合更符合时下的做法，而不该做顽固的石头。
这个道理，可以运用在生活的方方面面。
Rating: 4/5
Read "I Decided to Live as Me" by Kim Su-hyun. It has been popular quite recently and not easy to get a hard copy from the library.
Kim has some intelligent and heart-warming lessons for us in her book, and a number of them that I agree and would like to share with friends.
1) "Don't make your entire life collateral": "Living just to satisfy our parents isn't love, but a kind of debtor's life. Just as it is up to you to take responsibility for your own life, it is up to your parents to realize their children don't exist to please them. The only thing in our power is to be responsible for ourselves and to hope, but not expect, that the way we live meets our parents' expectations."
which brings us to 2) Living for myself: "Was there anything you ever did because you liked doing it? How many things have you done because you liked doing it, not because you wanted to have done it?"
Kim shared a TV program about children's identity and self-esteem featured a "nice" kid who liked to help others. When the producers asked what he wanted to do, he said, "Help Mom" or "Wash Dad's car." When they asked what he really wanted to do for himself, he couldn't answer.
When we occupy ourselves in doing things that others expect from us and suppress our own desires, we lose any sense of what we enjoy and what we really want.
3) "To want a life of perfect safety, free from the unexpected or even the inevitable, is to wish for a life in a bubble. Safety in life doesn't come from eliminating uncertainties but from confronting them."
4) When something unwelcome happens, we can choose to see it as a misfortune or just part of life. Our happiness hinges on this distinction.
5) Compete with thyself: "If we keep tallying our wins and losses or unwilling to give even an inch to someone else or feeling jealous of a friend's good fortune, we may be too accustomed to a competitive society. Competition only makes us exhausted, yet does not guarantee a competitive edge. Instead of torturing ourselves by making everyone our nemesis, find our real purpose and build a world of our own."
6) Accept the ordinary nature of life and find what is fulfilling within it: "Friends may never turn green with envy at the thought of me, and my family may never speak grandly of me as someone who brings honor to our household, but I have things I want to do and learn about. There are many limitations in my life and few guarantees - besides death and taxes - but even an ordinary life isn't completely without promise.
7) "Stop making an effort to be nice just for the sake of not being disliked and don't spend your energy on people who means nothing to you: some boss you won't even remember after you quit, or a relative you see only occasionally" etc.
8) "True value cannot be measured in numbers: An IQ score is not a measure of wisdom, the number of friends we have doesn't say anything about the depths of our friendships, the number of rooms in someone's house doesn't guarantee a happy family, and someone's yearly income doesn't reflect their integrity."
9) "Dumping the unnecessary in life will set you free. Life is like a long trip. You've got to travel light so you don't exhaust yourself. If you want to feel lighter, find the courage to throw some things away, i.e. things you don't need in life, to worries about things that haven't even happened, to desires that make life unnecessarily heavy, to shame when you haven't done anything wrong, to fraught relationships that only exhaust you.
10) "If you're not willing to give up anything, you'll never gain anything, either."
11) I love this statement: "It's our first go at life - we need a little trial and error.": "Life can never be as neat as we want it. Sometimes we put enormous effort into things that turn out to be unimportant, and there are wasteful moments no matter how careful we are. Instead of regretting your actions, it's better to leave yourself a margin of error. The things we do aren't always the smartest, and sometimes being scatter-brained is part of the ride. Life can't always be super efficient."
12) This small lesson helped me lessen my guilt a little haha: "Don't regret past shopping decisions. Through those frequent fashion failures and trial and errors, people then figure out the best style for themselves and develop their own taste in clothes." We'd made an effort to figure out what's best for us!
13) Add variety to our life: "In the movie Oldboy, the character Lee Woo-jin locks Oh Dae-su in a cell and makes him eat only fried dumplings for fifteen years. Imagine a hamster running in place on its wheel, living the same way in the same place for its whole life. Would such a hamster experience time? A life in which every day is the same would seem to pass by in a single moment. By locking Dae-su in the same daily regimen, Woo-jin stole fifteen years of his life. In an essay titled "Long-Lifer," the poet and essayist Pi Chundeuk wrote, 'A person who has lived from day to day like a machine can be eighty and still have had a very short life.' To live the same way every day is to both disregard life's infinite possibilities and lose oneself. So go see the ocean on the weekends, take a different route home after work, meet new people, or do something you've never tried before. Let go of your routines and try to surprise yourself."
14) Looking inward, and putting it into use outward: "What is it that makes life meaningful? After much thought, I concluded that it is about looking inward to discover your inner truth and goodness, and looking outward to realize this truth and goodness in the world. As Aristophanes said, 'We need others to complete who we are.' We find our meaning and values in our relationship with society and others."
Rating: 3.75/5
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