Life is a loop, we are constantly circling between experiencing and understanding. — Lessons from movies
Arrival
Ted Chiang
The sci-fi novel written by Ted used a lot of mythologies of god and ancient cultures to try to tell us some information about life. I would share three stories which has inspired me the most.
The first one, chapter 4th, Stories of Your Life and Others, was also the one which was adapted to a movie, Arrival. Louise was a linguist who was asked to make communication with aliens which had suddenly arrive on the earth. She tried sound and writing vocabularies to explain every information the army want her to pass to them. During the procession, she gradually understood the words those aliens used and found the important meanings behind the design of their words.
Through the new languages, Louis could surprisingly see her future of getting married with the physician now she worked together and born a daughter but she would died in her 25. Louis was so brave to make the same decision though she still knew she would lose her daughter. Because the formula of the alien words told her that the past, present and future were not a line, they were actually a circle which connect our whole life. It is said by Søren Kierkegaard that you have to look forwards if you want to experience life, while you should look backwards in order to understand life.
The request for that meeting was perhaps the second most momentous phone call in my life. The first, of course, will be the one of Mountain Rescue. At that point your dad and I will be speaking to each other maybe once a year, tops. After I get the phone call, though, the first thing I’ll do will be to call your father. He and I will drive out together to perform the identification, a long silent car ride. I remember the morgue, all tile and stainless steel, the hum of refrigeration and smell of antiseptic.
In my opinion, I consider the name Arrival of the book was not only mean the arrival of aliens, also of every human life in the world. It was such a mature and great decision of Louis to follow her destination instead of avoiding the tragedy happening when she had already known her future.
