Small Blessings
Week 17
Spent a day waffling around plans and not accomplishing many. Then an hour tonight searching for a movie to watch for this week. In the past, this process would end with me getting irritated with the search and not watching anything at all. Since I’m now trying to do at least one movie a week, I really had to find something — and with how trying this week has been — I don’t think I could have found anything more fitting than How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies on Netflix. What a pleasant and beautiful surprise this turned out to be.
It’s such a special movie that I don’t actually want to write much about it, or about how much it moved me. Maybe it has to do with the mental space I’ve been in this week, but still, it is so real in so many of its nuances and sheds such a radiant light on how family can both divide and unite in difficult times, and how often the simplest things hold the most weight. Checking in with your family, holding space for conversation, being there for your elders, and not “counting the minutes” all go a long way in enriching their lives.
There are a few special moments in the movie, but one especially poignant scene is when Grandma describes the feeling around Chinese New Year. “I wouldn’t call it loneliness; it’s part of life’s process,” she says, when M asks her if she gets lonely on Chinese New Year. She says the day itself doesn’t affect her, as she still goes about her rituals of preparing a lot of food. However, it’s the day after that she struggles with, when there’s a lot of leftover food in the fridge that she has to eat by herself again because no one visits her for the festival anymore. Yet, she doesn’t hold it against any of her children who don’t show up. On Sundays when it’s family day and they don’t show up you see her waiting expectantly until she loses hope. Modern trappings and bruised egos have taken precedence. You see M — who himself is there with dubious intentions — learn from these moments as well and I think the film captures that quite brilliantly.
Upon learning some tragic news, Grandma stoically responds that “the rice grains have become cooked rice”, implying that one must accept what cannot be changed. It’s been a tough week. I haven’t had much room for thought with everything that’s happened, so I’m just taking the time to be grateful for small victories: for a knee that doesn’t hurt during your first game of football in a year; for the sun and spring; for friends and family who stand up when the going gets tough; for all small blessings one can get really. It’s nice to have people like that in your life — and for someone like me, who often doesn’t call for support, it’s always a nice reminder that people will look out for you anyway.
🥘 Food
📚 Reading
- The Confidential Agent, by Graham Greene
- Grokking Simplicity, for work book club.
- Why not live each day as if it were the first—