After the lecture on collaboration, i was reminded of the impressive result of great collaboration..
Still Alice is a 2014 movie about a linguistics professor who gets Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease in her 50s. It’s about her struggle, her loss of memory and hope, her family dealing with the stress of the disease impacting on their own lives, and the grief of the disintegrating condition. This is one of my favourite movies – i wanted to watch it before it even came out. Julianne Moore, not surprisingly, won several awards (including her first Oscar) for this role. Her acting is so amazing in this movie. For this, i commend her great talent and the great direction of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, based on the novel written by Lisa Genova. The writing in this movie is so so so so so incredible. This really made me think about the importance of being impressive when collaborating with someone. A great collaborative effort creates a great film.
“Everything I accumulated in life, everything I’ve worked so hard for – now all that is being ripped away. As you can imagine, or as you know, this is hell. But it gets worse. Who can take us seriously when we are so far from who we once were? Our strange behaviour and fumbled sentences change other’s perception of us and our perception of ourselves. We become ridiculous, incapable, comic. But this is not who we are, this is our disease. And like any disease it has a cause, it has a progression, and it could have a cure. My greatest wish is that my children, our children – the next generation – do not have to face what I am facing. But for the time being, I’m still alive. I know I’m alive. I have people I love dearly. I have things I want to do with my life. I rail against myself for not being able to remember things – but I still have moments in the day of pure happiness and joy. And please do not think that I am suffering. I am not suffering. I am struggling. Struggling to be part of things, to stay connected to whom I was once. So, ‘live in the moment’ I tell myself. It’s really all I can do, live in the moment. And not beat myself up too much… and not beat myself up too much for mastering the art of losing. One thing I will try to hold onto though is the memory of speaking here today. It will go, I know it will. It may be gone by tomorrow. But it means so much to be talking here, today, like my old ambitious self who was so fascinated by communication.”
