I watched the movie "Reign Over Me" last week, with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle's been in some powerful movies in the last few years (i.e. Hotel Rwanda, Crash) so I wasn't surprised to be moved by this one as well. It seems to give one a cause for some serious contemplation.

"Reign Over Me" is, to put it simply, about a man who lost his entire family (even the dog) in the tragedy of 9/11. His college roommate runs into him on the street and begins to get to know him all over again. That's pretty much the summary of the movie, and I'm not a reviewer, so I don't really feel the need to go into it in too much detail. But the movie made me think about some things.

Most of the movie is from the viewpoint of Don Cheadle's character, Alan Johnson, who plays the college roommate of Adam Sandler's character, Charlie Fineman. Alan and all of the people around Charlie see the changes in him since he lost his family, and they're all determined to get him help to deal with the tragedy. The thing they don't realize is that Charlie IS dealing with it. He's just not dealing with it in the way they feel he should, in the way they deal with it.

How often do we project our own feelings and expectations of ourselves onto other people? I mean, the movie deals with this regarding grief - how we all grieve in different ways - but really, the same applies to any other aspect of life as well. How many fights and arguments happen because someone didn't handle something the way that we thought they should? How much frustration do we all cause ourselves because we look at someone else and think "why didn't they do this how I wanted them to?"

We're all different. We all handle both grief and any other emotion or circumstance or situation that life deals us in different ways. We all see the world in different ways. That's the beauty of life... how boring would it be if we all thought alike? It'd be a pretty uneventful world. Easier? Definitely. As colorful, beautiful, and intense? No way. So WHY do we expect everyone to behave the way we do or see things the way we do or react to things the way we do? It's a hard habit to get out of - but once you do, I think it can be eye-opening. And liberating.

Looking at how people do things and handle things can cause some pretty high expectations to surface, even when you may not realize it. We all make a lot of our choices based on our own personal experiences, and our views of the world may come from that too. But no two people have the same personal experiences, so they likely won't make the same choices or do things the same way. But yet somehow we still expect them to. I think the hardest part comes in realizing when you're doing this, and shifting away from that. Having high expectations of people can let you down a lot, especially if your expectations of them are just a projection of your expectations of yourself. It seems best to learn to give people a break - and sometimes, to give yourself a break.

I know for me personally - I look around at the people in my life and sometimes I see them doing things that I think are stupid or silly or don't agree with. But what makes me the "right" one? Just because they're not doing something how I would or how I think it should be done doesn't make them bad or wrong. It makes them DIFFERENT FROM ME. And it gives me a choice - I can be upset or mad or frustrated at them or mock them for not handling it how I would, or... I can accept them and love them - including the ways they're different from me. I can let them grieve the way they need to grieve, I can let them make choices I might not make, I can let them retreat and be alone if they need to in places where I might choose to pull others to me instead.

It's not easy when you don't understand why someone does things the way they do. It's confusing, and can be very frustrating. But that's OKAY. It's not the end of the world. And even though it can lead to this if you choose it that way - it's not even the end of your friendship. But it CAN strengthen it. Love someone, and celebrate their differences - and eventually, you might even start to understand them better.

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." -Thomas Merton