Golden Gate Bridge, originally uploaded by vivekian.

Taken at Crissy Fields at San Francisco

This was taken last year while visiting Virginia with an old simplistic Olympus FE110

fall leaves

**This post has spoilers to the movie “Adam“. Please don’t read if you intend to watch the movie **

Dear Adam,

Look how far we have come.

Love,
Beth.

Beth’s letter to Adam gifting him her own written children’s book at the end of the movie, leaves the viewers wondering if they ever do get back together. Even more interestingly for me the ending emphasized the crux of the movie — during our life we meet a lot of people, and how some of them (some stay, some leave) are catalysts in the transformations that happen in these journeys that we undertake.

Adam and Beth meet each other when both their lives are at a crossroad. For Adam (suffering from Asperger Syndrome) , he is rudderless having lost his father — his only connection to the outside world — and then subsequently losing his job. Beth on the other hand is walking out of a bad relationship and not sure if the world around her has any honesty or trust. They both find each other and in their own ways complete each other. Adam finds in Beth his connection to the outer world, and his teacher. Beth on the other hand finds in Adam the innocence, honesty and trust she is looking for. During the time that they spend together their lives move on. Adam becomes more confident to face the world, while Beth on the other hand learns that not all the world is a bad place. The fact that they both don’t end up together (they might – we just don’t know) is inconsequential. Perhaps more important is that their journey together has influenced them both and transformed them into their present better selves.

This movie kind of reminded me of mirroring a lot of our own lives in this generation — partially nomadic, journeying from one place to another, having no fixed home. In each of these journeys, friends enter silently, sometimes leave silently and the memories manage to linger on for years. But each journey is transformational in some way or another. Each friend brings his own lens through which we have not seen this world before. They quietly and invisibly touch our inner selves with the realization dawning much later during periods of introspective insight of how much we have been influenced by them. Each journey significant in its own little way and contributing to the kind of a person we become. And then its perhaps this sum of all these journeys that is what we call life. Or perhaps maybe I am getting a bit ahead of myself.