Random thoughts after watching Crash

I just finished watching the movie Crash. I haven't seen it before and decided to get it off of my Netflix. I cannot believe how good that movie was. I haven't cried and laughed during a movie like I did during Crash in a long time... maybe never have. I mean there were some parts I was crying like a baby... when the locksmith's daughter gets shot, when the police officer rescues the black woman he molested just the day prior, when the mother recognizes her son in the morgue, and when Ludacris lets the immigrants free in Chinatown.

I think the word "love" was uttered twice in the movie... when the director tells his wife that he loves her and when Sandra Bullock's character tells her husband that she loves him. And there were a 1000 more moments when you could feel love between characters, but the words were not uttered, like when Sandra Bullock is hugging her maid. I'm not sure what that really means, but I'm pretty sure it's reflective of the world that we live in... in the movie there's so much hatred, either conscious or subconscious that comes out in various forms, and there's love too, even if it's not expressed verbally.

Somehow it's so painful to utter these beautiful words, "I love you," probably because it makes you very vulnerable. Someone told me once that when you love somone, you make yourself vulnerable to getting hurt by that person because of that attachment. Yes, I think that's true in a sense, but there's no way I would want to stop loving or caring for people. And in the movie, every single character cannot help but love, no matter how awful their situation is. There's the love between the Persian store owner and his daughter... and eventually he realizes that the Hispanic locksmith has that same love for his own daughter, a love that he almost physically destroyed with his gun.

Every character in the movie has love for someone, and has compassion no matter what their outward actions reveal, and I think that this is true about real human life. Unfortunately, the flip side is true in this movie, which is what I think made this movie even better and even sadder. Ryan Phillipe's character... he was so pure and almost innocent as a young police officer, wanting to do the right thing. You knew in the beginning that he was going to come crashing down, and that's exactly what he did. He gave a ride to a black hitchhiker, who, I might add was probably one of the most adorable, fun, and likeable characters in the movie, and the fear of his fellow brethren eventually came out in that fatal car ride.

I felt that this movie was a commentary on how our actions are motivated by fear. How much is this really true? I don't know... Is it fear that motivates us to make certain friends, to end certain relationships, to choose our careers? What would the world be like if we made choices based on love? Ok, that's a very vague question.... I'm not even sure if I understand what I just wrote. Anyways, I'm allowed... it's my blog!!!

Regardless, we all have our own stories to tell, stories about love and hate. And about getting hurt and hurting people even though we didn't really mean to. Ok, I'm being vague again.... sorry.

I watched this movie alone and definitely wish I had seen it with someone, maybe even a special someone. Someone who could hold me and tell me that at least he was not going to be a source of fear and confusion. But the next best thing for me is to write about it, even though I'm pretty sure that right now my thoughts are incredibly disorganized, but whatever.

This movie reminds me of all the different kinds of people I happen to see in the hospital, and how it's by chance that they have a medical problem that I'm supposed to help them with, and therefore, we meet. And they all have their own stories, and it's my job to get their story from hearing them speak, and from doing a physical exam so I can help them the best I can. (Funny how we as physicians have to listen to the patient's story, but also listen to the patient's body during the exam)

It makes me glad that I'm in the medical field, and that I'm able to train in a place like Emory in Atlanta so I can get to know the stories of people from all different kinds of situations in life. Like the little boy in the hospital with abdominal pain whose father calls his mother a whore in front of him. Like the 9 month old baby whose mother was a prostitute for awhile, and the mother now has a boyfriend who think the baby is too fat and that she could feel him 1/2 as often. Or like that father I wrote about in a previous blog who named his son "Fifty." Or the 18 year old mother whose baby has meningitis... she has two other children at home. And so many more stories... So many stories, and somehow, I, as a pediatrician, am woven into their lives. I guess when I think about it this way, how it's by chance that I'm the one providing care for my patients, I feel motivated to work harder as a physician so that at least I can make that small portion of their lives a little bit better instead of crashing into them.