‘The Iron Lady’: This film (for those who havent seen) is about Margaret Thatcher’s life in old age. She is no longer the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Her husband is dead (whom she loves more than she’d like to admit), her son has emotionally drifted apart, she lives alone in her apartment, her daughter comes in frequently to take care of her. But she is alone. She keeps hallucinating about her husband and goes into flashbacks of her life when she was serving as a Prime Minister. Everything about her house reminds her of the time when she was one- clothes, sourvenirs, furniture, some show on TV etc.
At the end of her term as Prime Minister, she wonders if all those years of living a life where people are really tough on you, where you have to make all the tough decisions when noone supports you were worth it. She definitely created more good in the country through her position and power. But she still wonders at the worth of it all at a certain point in the film.
She famously says:
‘One’s life must mean something.’
It is ok to help those who cant help themselves, but for those who do not need to crutch, they must get up on their own and ‘do something’.
Back then it was about doing something. These days its about being someone.
Margaret tells her doctor, ‘The problem with our age is that we always ask, ‘How are you feeling? Not ‘What are you thinking?. Ask me what am I thinking. I think that one must watch their thoughts as they become actions, watch the actions as they become habits, watch the habits as they become character and watch the character as they become destiny. You become what you think.
Very powerful. And very true. We become what we want to. Where does the want come from? Thoughts? No… feelings… that’s the problem with our age. We think too much.
Yes there are situations where one must make the tough decisions. One is put in a situation to think about the greater good of mankind.
Mankind is heterogeneous. You can never keep everyone happy. There is no scale to measure if the good has outdone the harm/evil if you are to think about making the best decision under the circumstances. What does one do at such a situation? Go back to feelings. Feelings are universal – love, hate, anger, disappointment. What makes one laugh will definitely amuse the other. What makes one howl will definitely make the other’s eye moist. We react and feel the same about stimulus. Stimulus and Response theory anyone? Well, the theory is just the cue not the whole story.
Any attempt at peace and love, no matter how insignificant, how ‘irrelevant’, how impossible, how irrational, how insufficient… does serve the purpose… it never fails. Never. The greater good of mankind must come through each and every single person’s effort at peace and love which results in harmony. It is never external, always internal. You will be surprised how many people you bind together through your singular effort. Speaking from personal experience.
Moneyball: This is a movie about the General Manager of a national Baseball team named Oakland Atheletics. We have always seen the players’ story, the coach’s story. We now see the story of the man who puts the show together. Here is a man who has to get the money to pay the players, get the right players to win tournaments so that they could earn more. All the while this GM cannot loose the real focus of the game- To play. He is not bothered with the people in the team, he is bothered with Oakland Atheletics and whoever plays for it at the moment. If nonchalantly trades his players with other teams for performance boost. He fires some players who are undergoing momentary struggles, he gives that second chance to those players who have been written off as dead. He takes the unconventional road- he wins tournaments not on emotional inspiration but on statistics. He gets a Yale graduate in Economics to analyse the players who can be a part of the Oaklands’ team and then he uses the same technique to boost their performance.
Inspiring. But flawed.
He focussed on the wrong things at wrong time.
After winning 20 games in the American League, he tells the Yale grad:
‘Its not about winning.’
It is okay to break the record in the history of the American League, but what really matters is the last game of the season. None will remember this if we loose the last game. That is important.
Wrong.
Everyone wants quick fixes, convenience over matter. Winning over loosing… we want prechewed fodder. We are lazy to go back to history. When we refresh the web page in the mind, it must show victory on that page. It does not matter what precedes it. It does not matter what one does to win. People don’t matter. Winning does.
The GM was cold and ruthless throughout. When he got emotional, he got screwed. After the phenomenal success of the Oakland Atheletics, he got offered by Red Sox to manage the team on the same statistical philosophy pioneered at OA for 12,500,000 dollars a year. He refused. Reason- attachement to the success of former team and some ghosts from the past. It’s a sorry immature combination. Its sad too.
We always undermine people. The team is made of people, not machines who perform on command. One needs genuine inspiration and enabling environment to perform anything.
You cant fix people. You can work with them, heal them, heal yourself and achieve something that lasts and adds value to human life. Everything else is insignificant. It really is.
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