This past Saturday I saw The Five-Year Engagement. I had been wanting to see it for awhile now, since it recieved a higher-than-normal rating on Rotten Tomatoes of a 63%. Let me be clear by saying, I don't normally want to see chick-flicks in the first place, so this was out of character for me. They rank somewhere on my list right around Anime. Maybe I should have listened to my gut instinct to stay away from the sappy, funny romance, because as I sit here, I'm still trying to figure out how it had so many positive reviews. I guess I need to get a different sense of humor, because the comedy just didn't rub me the right way. And let's be honest, I'm kinda of bitter about romance movies in the first place...if you can't tell. To give you a background of the story, Violet and Tom are in love. (Duh) Tom proposes to Violet, and they move to Wisconsin because Violet was offered her dream job there. They try to plan their wedding in vain, as one thing after another comes up. Unfortunetly, Tom has to give up his dreams of running his own restaurant to support Violet. Throughout the story Tom becomes hopelessly miserable, and they begin to drift apart. For much of the movie their relationship hangs in the balance. As much as I hated how long it was, combined with the on-again, off-again relationship of the characters, there was one scene of the movie that really stuck out to me.
The main character Violet and her sister, are having a heart to heart while they play with her sister's 2 small children. They begin to talk in "Cookie Monster" and "Elmo" voices to not only entertain the kids, but to talk in adult code in front of them. Violet is so confused and undecided as to whether she wants to marry Tom, or if there are better fish in the sea. Violet is so wrapped up in finding the perfect one that she's having a hard time committing and accepting anyone who isn't absolutely flawless. Violet's sister become increasingly frustrated and blurts out:
"Elmo thinks there is no right cookie. You just have to pick one and take a bite!"
Her sister becomes baffled for a good reason, she is in a completely different situation than her sister. She ended up marrying Tom's brother, who in kind terms, is a loser. They had a one night stand that resulted in her sister getting pregnant. Violet's sister married Tom's brother mainly because she was pregnant. If that wouldn't had happened, they would have quickly gone their separate ways and never saw each other again. Her sister is obviously living a life that she never saw herself having. She's not bitter or unhappy with how her life turned, honestly she couldn't imagine anything better, she is madly in love with her husband and kids. Seeing her sister agonize over a perfectly great guy makes her snap and talk some sense into Violet. She quickly lets Violet know that there isn't such a thing as the perfect cookie, because she had experienced first hand how life works. You work with what you have, even if it isn't perfect.
Not to make cookies a deep analogy, but I look at it this way. We all start life out with a full box of cookies. There are all types of cookies out there with all sorts of flavors. Certain flavors attract us more than others. I personally like all chocolate flavors. I've always been pretty selective when it comes to cookies; I only sampled one or two kids of cookies before deciding what kind I wanted. I figured why waste your time sampling peanut butter cookies, when I knew I wanted chocolate! At some point I met a chocolate cookie that I thought I could stick with everyday, so I took a bite and bought the box. If you're smart, you'll know not to keep a checklist of every single ingredient you want in a cookie, because you probably won't ever find it. You'll just end up picking apart every cookie you try. Pick a main flavor and take it with or without nuts as a compromise. I'm not saying buy the first bag of cookies you think would be OK. Lets be honest, who wants to eat a so-so cookie everyday? Not this girl. Its knowing that there are good parts about cookies, like sugar, and bad parts, like calories. Remember to be selective about who gets try your cookies. The more people we let sample our cookies, the less we will have to fill our cookie jar in the end. Give them a smell, not a bite. I can't promise eating same the same cookie everyday won't get stale or repetitive. You have to be creative. Sometimes you have to make an ice cream sandwich out of your cookies, or dunk it in chocolate milk instead of plain old white, even then, sometimes slathering cookies in hot fudge is totally called for. Its more about the fact that you have a special one-of-a-kind cookie all to yourself that you don't have to share with anyone.
In the end its all about the choices you choose to make, as with everything in life. I made a choice picking Evan, and I choose to love him unconditionally everyday, despite his lack of perfect ingredients sometimes. For all I know, there could be another guy out there who I would get along with better or love more easily, but the facts are: there will never be a perfect cookie, on this physical earth, that fully satisfies me in every possible aspect of my life. Returning my cookies for new ones will only result in the same vicious cycle of used, half-eaten, broken cookies. In my book I have a strict no return policy when it comes to cookies! So stop obsessing over finding the perfect cookie! Just pick one and take a bite!
