Mortality

Instead of sitting in front of my computer waiting for the election results to come in I decided to finally watch "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World," which I had rented a number of weeks ago.

If you have not seen "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" yet and are planning to, stop reading now.

The story takes place in a world where Earth is doomed to be destroyed by an asteroid in a number of weeks. Dodge (Steve Carell) has his wife leave him at the beginning of the film and heads out to find his old high school sweetheart. His unexpected companion on this adventure is his downstairs neighbor, Penny (Keira Knightley), who is trying to get back to her parents in London.

Unsurprisingly, over the course of their shared journey they fall in love and by the end of the movie they’ve professed their love to each other. This happens moments before EVERYONE DIES.

This is easily the closest a film has gotten to turning me into a blubbering fountain of tears as far back as I can remember. While I thought there might be some chance that they’d go with the happy ending and somehow have the asteroid averted, doing so would have simply ruined the movie in my opinion. The whole reason it ends up being such a beautiful tear-jerker is because of the tragedy. They just found each other and then the world literally ends in an absolutely terrifying way.

I desperately wanted to drive down to my girlfriend’s apartment and tell her I loved her and just hold her for the rest of the night, and in retrospect that would have been the right choice as I only got about three hours of sleep before the nightmares woke me up.

Death is a very scary thing to me, and as such I rarely think about it. I don’t have any belief in an afterlife or reincarnation, so what I get is what I’ve got. Nor have I had anyone close to me die yet so I’ve been insulted almost entirely from the concept. It’s hard to imagine how I would deal with the knowledge of my own looming demise, but I suspect I would be more in step with Penny than I would Dodge, who in the final moments manages to find calm, acceptance, and joy in what little time he got to have with Penny.

The movie is a great reminder to cherish what you have and to let those you love know it. If you’re looking to have a good cry I highly recommend watching the film, though not alone. At the very least you should have a pet nearby that you can pick up and squeeze.

I highly recommend a corgi.