movies vs. books

They make a lot of movies from books. And the book is almost always better than the movie. I acknowledge that there are a few exceptions but that is usually because the book wasn't that great to begin with. 

There are many reasons why the books are better. They have to cut parts out of the movies to fit within time constraints or because they don't want to slow down the movie. They will portray things differently than how you imagined it which can make you not like it as much. 

My major problem with movies that were adapted from my favorite books is that no matter how good the actors are, they still can't portray everything that is going on inside the characters head. In the book, we know why the character is doing that. In the movie, we just know that the character is doing that. We don't know their motivation, unless of course they are muttering to themselves or if they tell another character what their motivation is. 

This got me thinking about life and the people around me. We can guess at people's motivations but there is so much more going on in people's heads than we can even imagine. 

Picture everything that goes in your head at any given time. The eighteen million things that you are worried about, thinking about, dreaming about, remembering during one day. And then just realize that that same thing is happening in everybody else's head too. 

Imagine that you are out at a bar and you see a man hit another man. We might think we know their motivation. We think, "He is angry because the man insulted his mother." But there can be a lot more to it than that. Maybe he is trying to earn the respect of his friends and show that he is a man because lately he had been too emotional. Maybe the person he punched looked like his father who had been abusive when he was a child. Maybe he was hoping that he would injure his hand when he punched the guy so that he wouldn't have to go into work the next day. Maybe he just found out that his wife was cheating on him. Maybe... maybe... maybe...

No matter how well we think we know someone, there is so much about them that we can never know. We are complicated beings. I think if we remember that it will help us treat other people with more respect and compassion.