How far would you be willing to go?
Yesterday, I was watching a tv show with my brother where the main character killed her sister. My brother and I were very shocked; we are both very invested in this series, and didn’t think the character would do something like that.
I have a very close relationship with my brother, and my dad and mom have always made an emphasis on how important that is to them, and how important it should be to us. That made this scene much more alarming to me, especially because of how the character dies.
In the scene, the two characters are fighting, and one of the characters feels betrayed, and therefore, out of spite and anger, grabs a violin bow and slashes the other character’s neck. Not very realistic, but it’s a sci-fi series, and when it comes to death scenes it has a bit more of an imaginative input.
My brother and I were completely impacted by this scene, and had to pause for a few seconds to process what had just happened. The discussion had been a simple one, and the character had taken the situation way out of hand for no reason.
I processed the immediate actions that the characters took after this sequence, which were to clench her neck, and for the other character to run to her aid while saying “I didn’t mean to”. I thought quickly about how remorseful the character was, and thought that if I “accidentally” killed my brother, I would without a doubt kill myself next. I would not be able to carry the guilt of doing something so terrible to someone I love so much.
Now, something I wondered after the scene is how far can someone be willing to go to do something like that fully out of spite and anger? We always judge others’ actions, and easily talk about what we would do in their situations, but, how can we be completely sure? How can we know for certain that we wouldn’t do the same, especially if our situations and experiences were the same as those people?
I think that’s one of the most terrible yet interesting things about life. You never fully know anything. You might think you do, but you truly only understand your perceptions of these things. You only fully understand yourself right now, but you never know to what extent you’d go, or what you’d do.
I think this can be scary if you’re scared of uncertainty, but so can be daily life, and I think that’s the most important point sometimes. Living life day to day and being conscious of what you’re doing, because you never truly know what’s going to happen. You never know how others are going to act, how the way others act might affect you, how you might act in a certain situation, or how it could make or break your relationships with others. So, I think that’s what this blog post is fully about, about being conscious of what you do, especially because it could affect others.