Category: A Spiritual Look At All Forms Of Entertainment…

“Same Kind of Different as Me” is a heart-felt 2017 film based upon the true story of the lives of a wealthy international art dealer named Ron Hall (played by Greg Kinnear) and his wife Deborah (played by Renee Zellweger) and how an angry homeless man named Denver Moore (played by Dijimon Hounsou) becomes the catalyst to not only saving their marriage, but also their spiritual lives as well.

When the film begins, the viewer is introduced to Ron and Deborah where it becomes quickly apparent how rocky their marriage has become after many years of being together. Ron has been caught cheating and is forced to admit the truth to his wife. Deborah is totally devastated when she is told, but isn’t ready to give up hope just yet in their relationship. In an attempt to save it, Deborah asks Ron to help her one day at the local food kitchen where she’s been volunteering for some time, Begrudgingly, Ron agrees to help just this once, although he makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t really want to be there. He, in fact, is one of those guys who have become so consumed with money and status that serving food to homeless people feels completely beneath him. But as they begin to serve meals that day, when a sudden violent outburst from a homeless man (Denver) startles Ron to the point of wanting to immediately leave a situation he never wanted to be in the first place, Deborah becomes more curious than afraid, because Denver is the very man she had a vision of in her dreams a few nights prior. Convinced that she and Ron are meant to help him somehow, Deborah sets out to befriend a man who makes it overly obvious from the onset he’s quite content in remaining friendless. Thus, begins Ron and Deborah’s spiritual journey of offering unconditional love not only towards a man who doesn’t know how to be loved, but also of rediscovering it with each other.

“Same Kind of Different as Me” really is one of those films that will make you laugh, cry, and get a lot of those feel-good tingly sensations while you watch it. To some, I’m sure it may feel like it’s too stocked with Christian symbolism, but to me, beneath the surface was an incredible movie that provided a great reminder of who I used to be and who I’m working on becoming.

I once was a lot like Ron Hall, consumed with the abundance of money that had been left to me by my parents. At the same time, I was always unwilling to do much of anything when it came to reaching out and lending a helping hand to anyone, unless it benefitted me somehow. In fact, pretty much everything that involved helping others usually felt beneath me, which in turn, made me become an extremely selfish and self-centered person. Other than donating money anonymously, I rarely got my hands “dirty” anywhere that might have befitted the less fortunate. But through a series of humbling health issues and financial failure in life, I began to reassess myself and asked God to transform me into a much more unconditionally loving human being.

Over the years ever since, my desire to help others has definitely changed. Now I am more than willing to reach out and help others, not just in my recovery from addiction-based life, but also outside those rooms as well. Case in point, I had a homeless man approach me outside one of my 12 Step meetings recently. There, he asked for something to eat, of which I promptly took him to a store nearby and bought him a meal.

There are so many people in the world like this homeless man and like Denver Moore who are worthy and deserving of God’s unconditional love, yet they so often get overlooked in life because of the way they look, or because of being homeless, or because they don’t fit into some safe box that many create around themselves. But because of people like Ron and Deborah Hall, who stepped outside that box by helping an angry homeless man named Denver Moore, God was able to save both a marriage and a lonely soul that was ultimately broken.

“Same Kind of Different as Me” truly is a spiritually uplifting film that portrays a great message of unconditional love and healing, one that is a great reminder of something I think we all should be offering a lot more of in life these days…especially to those less fortunate…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Would you take the red pill or the blue pill? That’s the question that Neo faced in the 1999 hit film “The Matrix” and something I’ve pondered quite a bit ever since, but in a slightly different way than what those pills represented in the movie.

In “The Matrix”, the red pill represented knowledge, freedom and the truth of reality, while taking the blue pill represented falsehood, security, and the ignorance of illusion. By taking the red pill, one would leave the cushy fake world of the Matrix and experience true reality, while taking the blue pill meant remaining in the Matrix and living out life in an illusory existence. Neo ends up taking the red pill of course and eventually goes on to see all the delusions he lived in for so long.

Now imagine, purely hypothetically, if in real life taking the red pill meant immediately leaving this world and entering whatever is beyond this life, while the blue pill meant remaining here and living out the natural course of our life until our flame extinguished on its own. Which one would you take?

For the majority of my life up until just over five years ago, I know I would have taken the blue pill because I loved the illusion I lived in. Money, sex, power, position, status, each were the things I chased after and each had almost full control over me. But then a change happened in my life, one where I began to see how fake all of that was and how unimportant each really was in the grand scheme of things. And as that change began, a whole lot of physical, mental, and emotional pain emerged in my life and has been with me on some level ever since.

Living in this world now and being able to see through the many illusions of it, yet not feeling much joy because of the serious level of pain I constantly deal with is what leads me to often say that I would instantly take the red pill in a heartbeat.

If you are someone like me, who lives with chronic pain, then you probably understand why I’m saying this because going through life with a pain filter makes it very hard to experience joy in just about everything. And believe me, I do my best to cultivate joy anywhere I can, but with my life always being tainted by this high level of pain, it makes it extremely difficult to ever feel any type of joy whatsoever. Hence the reason why I would like to take one of those red pills, even in this very moment.

When I explained this to my therapist recently, she asked me what I’d do if all my pain went away. I immediately answered with the truth, in that I wouldn’t want to take that red pill anymore. But ironically, I wouldn’t want to take the blue pill either at that point. Instead, I’d just want to exist in the state I was in, not running from the illusions this world creates but not living in them either. Because ultimately, I believe that joy can be felt without having to ever seek some person, place, or thing. Contrary, I believe in any given moment, joy can be felt in the simplest of things like stepping outside into the pouring rain and feeling every droplet splash off one’s body. But unfortunately, it’s quite easy to fall prey to all the illusions of this world that one rarely gets to experience something like that.

I don’t believe there is any person, place, or thing in this world that can ever take my pain away and create the joy I seek. Nor do I believe I’m meant to check out in this world as quick as possible, to escape all my pain, like my father did. As hard as my life feels on most days, deep down on my soul level, I know I don’t want to take any pill or anything really that might alter my present state, as I’m inclined to believe that where I’m at right now, even as I type these very words, is exactly where God wants me to be.

Sometimes that’s a really hard concept to embrace, especially on those days where I literally am either screaming in agony or profusely crying over my level of pain, as it’s on those days that I really just want to take that red pill and end my existence here, hoping my next might be far better.

But alas, I don’t think that’s God’s will for me and so I trudge on, doing my best to make it through day after day, with faith, hope, and a belief that I will one day again feel joy in a way that doesn’t come from any of those illusions this world creates, and instead is able to generate itself from a place that I’m still working on accessing within…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

I know a movie with the title “Happy Death Day” probably doesn’t sound all that appealing to most, as it initially didn’t for me, especially being someone who’s normally not into horror movies. But I opted to see it anyway, simply because it utilized the “Groundhog Day” style of filming where a person continues to repeat the same day over and over again until they figure out why they’re repeating it in the first place.

Ever since Bill Murray starred in “Groundhog Day”, I’ve really enjoyed seeing this style of filming show up in other ways such as in movies like “Edge of Tomorrow” and “Before I Fall”. Now another title, that being “Happy Death Day”, can be added to that list and while it was similar in concept, it did have its own unique edge like each of its predecessors did.

Why I keep finding myself spiritually connecting to this concept of a movie is because it feels a lot like my life. In each of the “Groundhog Day” type of movies, the protagonist is always someone who isn’t too nice of a person. In fact, they usually seem to be quite stuck on themselves. In other words, they are always selfish and self-centered to the core. But through a series of countless days being repeated over and over again, they begin to see the ugliness of that within themselves and eventually find a path of redemption by turning to a life of unconditional love and kindness.

And oh, I can so relate to that, because after all, pretty much every single year prior to April of 2010, my life was super self-absorbed into one thing, me. I thought of me first. I thought of my needs, wants, and desires first and I never cared about anyone else’s. Instead, I tried to make the world revolve around me. And then one day, it happened.

My left leg developed some serious numbness. And that began a life of one health problem emerging after another. But each have helped me to slowly see just how self-centered of a person I had become in life. Over the years, my perception of the world has shifted because of this, as a life of pain definitely shifts one’s view of things around them. Now, I find myself caring a lot more about the planet, my family, my friends, and every one I come across, especially those who too are going through great trials and tribulations in life.

Unfortunately, I’m still repeating the same day though, as I continue to wake up every morning and feel all that uncomfortability in my mind and body from the pain. And when one goes through pain like this on a consistent basis, it doesn’t matter what happens during the day, because things always feel the same. Activities feel the same. Meals taste the same. People sound the same. Everything appears the same in our minds and life begins to feel monotonous.

“Happy Death Day” reminded me a lot of this, except in this movie, things weren’t centered around chronic pain. In this case, it was about a selfish sorority girl named Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), who keeps getting murdered on the night of her birthday by a masked individual, which only results in her waking up on the same day in a stranger’s dorm room feeling hungover. As the days repeat, Tree proceeds to face the same set of circumstances of her selfish life and attempts to figure out who keeps killing her and why. And along the way, she slowly finds the path to redemption of her character by becoming a more unconditionally loving person.

I know this might sound like a stupid concept for a movie, but for those like me, who live out every day battling some type of chronic pain, it’s so easy to relate to films like this. Because deep down, we each want our repeating days of pain to end, to feel a little more normal in a world that never feels normal to us, and to smile and be happy for once, rather than to piece ourselves together and repeat one frustrating day after another.

So, maybe that’s why I tend to spiritually connect to films
like “Groundhog Day” and “Happy Death Day” as much as I do, because they always give me some hope in such a strange way. Hope that one day God will have me waking up into a new life, one that isn’t filled with repeating one day after another in chronic pain. And one where I finally smile from ear to ear, while feeling grateful for the shift I went through in those series of repeating days, from a life of selfishness to one of selflessness.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson