Lesson Eight: Not Everything Needs To Be A Message

We have spent an extremely lazy few days after the holidays. We have all slept in, stayed in our pajamas for way too long, read and watched endless movies.
The girls must have received at least a dozen  new movies for Christmas so they are perfectly content to sit and watch them for hours. I don't always join them (I can only watch so much teen angst), but did decide to sit down with them when they watched the Pixar movie "UP". I had seen the previews for this movie of course, but we had never seen it in the theatres and I sat down with the expectation that it would be a cute but brainless animated movie.

To my surprise, I found it to be a heartbreaking movie about a man who promises his wife adventure and through the course of their life, never gets to do that "big" adventure. As he looks back on his life, he feels like he failed by letting his opportunities pass him by.

Along comes a little boy scout into his life who needs to help the elderly to earn a patch. I thought this little boy was so sweet because they ended up teaching each other that it isn't necessarily the big adventures in life that count, sometimes it is the small adventures.

I am of course in tears by the end of the movie and ask my girls what they thought of it and what they thought the message was.  "What message?" is the reply I get.

What message?  Are you kidding me?  You know, the message about enjoying every minute and taking every opportunity to have adventures whether they are big or small?  How about the message about not taking for granted the moments that you get to be with your family or friends doing every day things?  Or maybe the message about learning from other people when you think you have nothing to learn from them?  Maybe something about doing things while you can before it's too late??

"Huh.  We didn't get any of that."

Sigh.  I guess there doesn't have to be a message in everything does there?

Lesson Eight:  Not everything needs to be a message