What I learned from Gatsby

I watched the new Great Gatsby for the first time this weekend. While I loved the remake and the soundtrack SO MUCH, I definitely have to say nothing beats the book― as in most cases. 

However, while I was watching the movie, something occurred to me in a different way than it ever had in the numerous times that I've read the book. 

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald 

You will only catch lightening in a bottle once, nothing is ever the same the second time around, no matter the effort that someone puts into a second chance, nothing will ever compare to the first. Going after one solitary desire will only drive you insane. And once you've been consumed by that desire, even if you fail, everyone and everything else will continue to move on. 

These are things that are prevalent in everyday life. You'll never play high school sports again, you'll never have another first kiss, you will never have another first love, and you will never have another first car. Firsts are a one time thing, and that is what they shall remain.

As I was sitting there thinking about how J. Gatsby lived the last five years of his life trying to recreate a memory, I thought about all of the really great things that happened to me only once. The memories are so bittersweet, I wouldn't trade them for anything. 

I have a tendency to be a control freak in certain situations. Because of this, I don't enjoy when things just come and go. I claim determination and drive as personality traits, but sometimes I use them as an excuse to be relentless in getting what I want. 

I've had friendships and relationships fail. I've had family, or people I assumed were family, just go away. I've had a few trials and tribulations in my short 21 years of life. I don't regret a single one of them. 

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

I think what it truly comes down to for me is that when a chapter in your life is over, you have to accept it and move on. There will be other opportunities for greater things and "firsts" to come along. I'm starting an entirely new phase of my life, so leaving those "lighting" moments in the past is the only remedy for a healthy future.

So, don't get too caught up. I've learned in these last eight months that the future is always brighter, and I am so much stronger. 

 

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. But he did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”