[Spoilers ahead]
In the film, an old man Noah reads a story to his wife Allie who does not recognize who he is. She is stricken with Alzheimer's. It was a love story, their own. A love that was young and reckless, brimming with passion. An explosive love between two people exploding with emotions. Apparently a lasting one too, as Noah did not give up on Allie, even when she did not know him. A whole day of reading grants him about 5 minutes of remembrance from Allie. Then she slipped away, leaving him heartbroken. The cycle has been repeating itself.
I don't find this love onscreen to be similar to mine. Maybe because Jon and myself (especially me) are people so laid back that we devote so little energy to passion. Something I found really heartbreaking in this movie is: if another person becomes the center of your life, once that person is taken away, your whole life collapses around you.
Amidst all the modern day tragedies we see now, life is just too short and unpredictable. A vow on the marriage aisle may be terminated abruptedly by its closing line: till death do us part. Or even if a couple spend decades together, how fleeting those decades are. I bet for our grandparents, their memories of their youth didn't seem so far away after all.
This passage I've read from 1st Corinthians made me think:
This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
It says that time is so short that, no matter what we own or don't own, it is fruitless to rejoice or weep in something so temporary. Even marriage. Marrying for marital bliss or romance will only bring but a short term of happiness. But marrying unto God is something eternal that will not be taken away. In the same way, our achievements and things we have in this life, if not done unto God would amount to nil, once time has passed by and all forgotten.
Sometimes we really need to be reminded when life is beautiful, that life is short. And even when life is ugly, all these are temporal too because life is short. Yet this short life is all we get to make our choices, and determine our eternal destiny. So invest it wisely.
