Forrest Gump.


It's one of my favorite movies.


I may be stating the obvious with this one, but there is something that I absolutely love about that movie that I don't think any story I've yet heard has ever captured.


I love the part where Forrest is just finishing up telling the people on the bus bench about his success with Bubba Gump Shrimping Co. and neither of the people believe that a millionaire would be sitting on a bus bench wasting his time telling ordinary people his life story.  Then he shows the lady a picture of him and Lieutenant Dan on the cover of Fortune 500 as the bus that she has just been waiting for passes her.  Forrest asks her if she's going to get on her bus and she says, "There will be another one in a short while."


I love that moment when she realizes that Forrest's story is something special.  Something that should be heard and listened to and remembered.  I love how ordinary he is, and yet incredibly extraordinary at the same time.


I wonder what it would be like if when we sat down to eat dinner with our families, or coffee with a friend, or even in our conversations with those we don't know very well (and maybe don't want to know very well), if we just realized that every person is worth being heard, listened to, and remembered.  I don't think I've been very good at that lately.  I have a tendency to want to be heard, listened to, and remembered so badly that I forget to hear, listen, and remember everyone else.


Also, I think I am so much like Jenny sometimes, and that's why I've always been more fascinated with the mystery of Jenny's part in the story than with Forrest's.  She spends so much of her time life trying to figure out who she is, and trying all these different things to try and fill her and make her into who she is.  In the past few years I tried picking habits and styles from people who I liked, and I did it because I wanted to be more like them.  I wanted those habits and styles because they intrigued me and I felt like I didn't have anything like that, anything that made me uniquely me.  The past year of my life has been trying to realize which habits and styles are actually mine, the ones that make me...me.  And just like we don't know what made Jenny stop doing things and changing herself with every new change in friends and locations, I'm not sure how or when I'm going to feel like I have myself figured out.  But I do know that something that is very different about me now, that I wouldn't be able to honestly say a few years ago is that I only want to be me.  Not an imitation of someone else.  


Side note:  this is my favorite quote of the whole movie.   


"I don't know if Momma was right or if, if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."

I found this from someone a while ago, so I won't pretend to take credit for it one bit.
I just really like it today.