Mindset

Mr. Caveman ( aka my main man ) and I were at the movies last night. The movie was a remake of the popular Chinese classic legend, of the forbidden love between a white snake demon and a human. The story is roughly like so : The white snake fell in love with an honest man, took the form of a beautiful human woman and married him. There was also a monk who was the certified demon catcher of the era, spotted the demon and went after the demon's very-long snake tail. He gave the demon a chance to leave the man, stressing that demon and human are not meant to be together. The final part was where the demon tried to get her man back from the monk's temple, and conjured up tsunamis to flood the temple with snakes that resembled Nessie the Loch Ness monster, only there were TWO of 'em! The movie ended with the snake demon being punished for her crimes and the couple forcibly parted forever.

A simple legend. But when we talked about the movie, we discussed that there are different ways for people to interprete it, depending on circumstances. Some look upon it as a tragic love story, where a couple so much in love with each other were tragically forced apart. They blame it on heartlessness in upholding the universal rules.

From my point of view, I see the demon as an obsessive, though misguided female who would stop at nothing regardless of the cost to keep her man. She pursued this love with a selfish single-mindedness and with a blatant disregard for others, resulting in chaos and tragedy.

From Mr. Caveman's point of view, he sees that forbidden love must be torn apart. But in the movie, the method used was forced justice on the lovers to uphold righteousness, not love and righteousness to move them into giving up each other.

Depending on how you look at it, one story will more often than not end up with many different flavours. It's the mindset that differs. Take the Harry Potter books for example. After reading the books, does one see wand-wavings and latin incantations plus a 'bezoar' being shoved down one's throat as a threat to the children's spiritual learnings, or the essence of the book that conveys the message of good triumphs over evil, and fighting together to prevent evil from staging a hostile takeover?

Even in well-loved fairy tales, one might see Cinderella's case as unpaid child labour, or Jack of the infamous beanstalk as a murderous thief, and rampant ostracism & racism in the ugly duckling.

Often, it's the mindset that clouds our perceptions. The 'what we think is right' frequently makes us see 'what we want to see', blinding us from seeing things as how God meant it to be seen.