Friday: No, I Don’t Watch ‘This Is Us’

A Week of Little Thoughts About Life

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made is letting my daughter read and watch the Twilight series the summer before 6th grade. Since then, she’s been a romance maniac. She loves to read and watch anything about romance and I can only hope that I’ve broadened her taste from Twilight and Titanic by adding in Mystic Pizza and Moonstruck. (Oh my God, I had no idea I loved Italians in love until I just wrote that sentence.)

So, it was in the vein of movies about love that she’s been jonesing to see the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga remake of A Star Is Born. Which we watched the other night. She loved it — the exquisite tragedy of their romance. I hated it.

It felt like going to work.

Depression, addiction, suicide. For a therapist, this is not what I would call entertainment, this is what I call sad.

I am a big advocate of stories. Stories, movies, song lyrics, fiction and poetry help us understand other people’s point of view and put ourselves in their shoes. It expands our understanding of the human experience and ignites our imagination — what would it have felt like to be second class on the Titanic? What would it feel like to get up on stage and sing a song for the first time in front of a stadium of people?