Since this movie was scheduled the week before Christmas, the evening was filled with mirth and laughter, even though the questions seemed to be mainly oriented around loss (Questions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6). Several people shared their experiences around losing a love. One person said that she was always better off when she lost a love, because the loves were all pretty crappy to begin with. Others talked about loves that were more satisfying, and thus probably hurt more when they were lost.
We also talked about how willing we are to spend time with gloomy people (Question 5). Someone said that he was willing to spend more time with a gloomy person if he felt hope that his investment of energy would make a difference for the person in the long run, than if he was merely tolerating the person's gloominess. Then several people talked about emotional vampires and how they have sucked the energy and hope from them at times in the past, and how they have learned to avoid them now.
We talked about introversion (Question 10). Some of us present have identified ourselves as introverted, and that label has made it harder for us to actually get out and connect with others.
Finally we came back to the loss of love, and one guy talked about how his lost love caused him to simply avoid the risk of loving again. He said his strategy was simply running away. We decided that was a classic strategy, and that pretty much every one of us had used it at one point or another.
(This video was reviewed by Bob McGarey)
Feel free to come and share your own personal insights sometime; the Saturday Night Video and Discussions here in Austin, Texas are a lot of fun and fascinating. (They're free, too.) Here are the questions the group came up with, based on the personal growth themes in the movie: