Senses of Love

There I was just hours' ago, standing in front of the TV in the gym, watching this movie again which I have watched before a long time ago, 'Mr. Holland's Opus'. Only this time I am older and a different kind of emotion swept over me as I revisited the familiar characters on the TV screen.

The audio was not audible, but I could easily understood what was happening on the screen as bits and pieces of the movie's plot came back to me.

I liked the movie back then when I watched it for the first time, I guess it had such a deep impact on me, that I was automatically drawn to the TV the moment I recognized that it was showing 'Mr. Holland's Opus'.

*** Spoiler ahead! ***

Holland is a talented musician who by chance became the music teacher of a high school, in the process he inspired the students to pick up music through his affectious passion in music. But the ironiest thing happened when his new born child was discovered to be deaf.

The movie showed the struggles of Holland accepting the cruel fact, and how his relationship with his wife and child became strained due to that.

For those interested in reading more about the movie, check out this review:
http://www.filethirteen.com/reviews/mrholland/mrholland.htm

The first surprise while re-watching parts of this movie again was that I noticed the recently famous Terence Howard was actually in it! Boy was he young (and slim) that time, lol.

Second surprise was discovering how much more emotionally affected I had become by the portion of the story involving the deaf child of Holland in the movie, most probably due to my personal involvement with a hearing-impaired friend recently.

I believe part of Holland's greatest grief was that his only child not being able to appreciate and understand Holland's greatest gift, that is music. But as the movie's ending shows, we do not always need any particular sense to feel love, other than the ability to receive love and love in return.

*** End of spoiler ***

I saw a documentary once, about a man who lost the ability to love after a car accident, because the part of his brain which enables him to feel attachments (affection, love) was damaged. I didn't even know such a part of the brain existed before watching this documentary. But apparently it does exist and again it shows just how dependable we are on our delicate bodies to remain 'human'.

The man was a really loving husband and father before the accident, but now he is talking of leaving the family because he didn't want to burden them any further. The documentary interviewed the wife and child, I could not find any word to express my feeling watching the wife on the TV suffering in silent grief and clinging to desperate optimism in hope that the husband would eventually learn back to love her and the child.

Anyway back to Mr Holland, it prompted me to think about what our five senses mean to us in the appreciation of this world. For those who are born with four or less senses, how do we explain what the other senses mean to them? What's red? What's blue? What's Do Re Mi?

And a question striked me, does having less sense(s) make them less dependent on physical traits when it comes to falling in love with someone? Would a sight-impaired person not need to care about how his lover look like? Would a hearing-impaired person not need to know how his lover sound like?

Let us project this situation to a gay who is sight or hearing-impaired, assuming he does not fancy guys who are 'less macho', what happens when he meets someone who acts straight but actually sounds like a sister, or someone who sounds very macho but actually likes to do 'catwalks'?

Maybe this gay guy would fall in love with the 'less macho' lover because he does not possess all the senses to realise the sissiness side of the lover. So in this case, it is not that he is less superficial, it's just that he is not able to 'see' the whole package.

I'm not sure whether I am the only known person who is so superficial, because I realise that I tend to need the agreement of all my five senses to decide on whether a guy attracts me. He has to look attractive, sound attractive, smell attractive, feel (touch) attractive and taste attractive. Is it really because I'm still too young to look past all these?

Of course, I'm all for good character (inner beauty) too, but maybe my mind has been totally brainwashed by the media culture (yes, we are taught to to blame the environment :-P), I am too used to the enjoyment of my senses that I could not possibly look past the outer shell and just appreciate the inner beauty of a lover.

The other morning, I was in the train, squeezing along with the crowd as usual, standing next to me was this short handsome guy, leaning against the edge of the train's door for support. I stretched out my hand to grab on the supporting bar just over his shoulder and accidentally brushed past his hair. At that split of a second, he instictly waved his hand around his head as if trying to chase away a fly. I was thinking, isn't he a bit sensitive?

And then I looked down, there they were, the two unmistakably white sticks folded and hung around his waist. He was sight-impaired.

He had the clearest brown eyes, gazing out of the door's glass, as if looking into somewhere infinity. To me, usually most of the sight/hearing impaired people always seem to be much more jovial than the regular folks (perhaps due to them understanding more of the need to think optimistic). But not this guy. He looked as though he had the greatest burden in his mind. And for some reason, I felt sorry for him, all the while thinking, "Does he know that he really is a sweet looking guy?". Yea, I'm afraid this was all I could think of in that moment of deep reflection, lol.

But now I wondered, would I have given the same amount of attention and thought to him had he been less physically attractive? Guess the disappointing answer was not hard to figure out.

The more I think about this annoying superficial trait of mine, the more I'm beginning to think less of myself, so I'm just gonna stop here and save me the agony of any further self-deprecation.

Afterall it's a Friday, I should be enjoying it! :-)