Finding Yourself:Theme From RED

"I somehow managed to play the protagonist and the antagonist in this story"-Peyton Hayley Giordano (RED)

Last week I wrote about starting over after you already made those messy mistakes, dropped your ego and learned to forgive yourself and others. This week I want to talk about another major theme from RED: finding yourself. 

When you focus on starting over you have to also focus on finding yourself. After being dragged through the mud and experiencing disappointment after disappointment, you have to hit the restart button. Restarting also means that things are going to have to change. In the process of us being dragged by our hair while our face scraps against the cement we become someone different. We just have to find out who this person is. 

Finding yourself is critical in the process of starting over. If we don't gain a clear vision of who we are we'll just falter into another mess (and who wants that?). Not knowing who you are usually results in you falling for anything. Knowing who you are (and who you used to be) will help you stand firm in your beliefs, values, and follow the path ahead of you will little slip ups. 

In RED, Peyton is on a journey to find out who she is after never getting the chance to truly know her parents. All she has is her mother's journals and writings she kept on a flash drive to refer to. Her dad never got the chance to even know she was going to exist and her mom ended it all before she could even develop a memory. Most of us get the chance to learn who we are by reflecting back on how our parents were/are. Peyton never got that chance which makes her journey both difficult and interesting. She finds herself making many of her parents' mistakes but it's harder for her to deal with them because she has no idea her parents already went through it all. 

Peyton begins to find herself when she sees herself where she is. The quote above is her reflecting on her past behavior and mistakes after it all blows up in her face. This should sound familiar to most of us. We tend to find ourselves while we're attempting to start over after something blew up in our faces. It's almost like the wreck and disaster is what we needed to see clearly. While we're under water we finally make the decision to breathe. Peyton is no different. 

If you're currently in a situation that seems impossible, almost like you're drowning, I dare you to breathe. Open your lungs and learn something new; how to start over and find yourself in the process. Figure out what you learned and become the person you always wanted to be. Live like you're the person you want to be and soon you won't be acting anymore. We all make mistakes, we all have to learn when to drop our egos, we have to forgive ourselves along with others, we have to start over, and we have to find ourselves all over again. While you're becoming someone new you're going to get a lot of hate and judgment thrown at you but who cares? Well...judgment...that sounds like something I could talk about next week, doesn't it? Until then, keep on looking....

In the meantime listen to a song about finding yourself: