My favorite film. Of all time. I need to watch it at least once enough to cling onto my own sanity, and if i watch it with you, you know i like you. It’s such a deep and in some ways disturbing tale of one man and his peculiar life, from his first pair of shoes to his sons first bus journey with Dorothy Harris. A story of hurt, love, loss and success; a man from Greenbow Alabama, with an IQ of 75, manages to find happiness around every corner. Maybe if we were all intellectually inept we would be happy for the rest of our lives.
There’s a reason this film means so much to me. Forrest goes through so much pain and loses everyone he loves, but still ends up happy. How does he do it? I don’t know. Fuck i wish i knew. From a small age he was bullied at school, due to the braces on his legs and him being dumber than the rest. Even whilst being pelted with rocks, Forrest still finds a way to look completely unaffected. He falls in love, with a pretty little girl called Jenny; little did he know she would be the bane of his existence, and screw him over more times than he can count, but he still thought of here whenever times were bad and that would make him feel better. Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe true love could make us all as happy as Forrest.
When Forrest joins the army he meets his ‘best good friend’ Bubba, and after a short stint in Vietnam he’s sat at the side of the lake, with his ‘best good friend’ passing away in his arms… Now that alone would emotionally cripple any normal person, but not Forrest. He takes it upon himself to fulfill Bubba’s dreams of being a shrimping boat captain, becomes one of the most successful men in America and gives half of his earnings to Bubba’s family. Why can’t the whole world be like him? Shortly after this, Foresst’s mamma falls sick, and passes away. He doesn’t have long to mourn over her death of course, as Jenny comes back and stays with him. Forrest has a reason to be happy again.
But no, wait, the story isn’t over. After a rejected marriage proposal and one intimate night, Jenny up and leaves Forrest without even leaving a note. Lets reflect… how many of us could cope after all of this? How many of us would of ran off the nearest cliff after losing your best friend, mother and one true love? Well, i over exaggerate, but you get my point. None of your sanity would be in tact, and maybe this was the case for Forrest too. He laces up his nike trainers, and runs across the entire United States, for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours… and he’s fixed. Maybe that’s what we should all do, worth a shot right?
In the end Forrest gets his (kind of) happy ending. Jenny returns to his life, with a little boy also called Forrest (like his daddy), and marries him. Jenny passes away shortly, and Forrest misses her with all his heart, but finds away to find happiness once again with his son. One of the greatest stories of all times, and i’ll be happy to listen to you argue the fact.
Why am i babbling on about a film that everyone’s seen? Well it’s simple really. Everyone can feel low and depressed and feel like so much in their life is going wrong, and be unhappy for a long long time. But not Forrest, he can lose everything he hold dear and still find a way to be happy. Maybe it’s because he’s stupid, maybe it’s because he eventually got what he wanted, but if he can find a way to be happy then there must be way for us all to be happy. Have a look around, find what you love, you might find happiness is a lot closer than you think. After all, life is like a box of chocolate’s, you never know what you’re gonna get.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Peace
Francis
Anxiety The Bitch 
Such a breathtaking film ❤
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Agreed. Well up everytime
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I haven’t watched the film, your blog still cast the movie’s magic on me. Beautiful!
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Now this is an awesome post. Even if I’m mad at Winston for using some of my life between the pages of his book. In 1986 I sat with the now famous Mr. Groom, having dinner in Memphis with my two children and he, and discussed the things we liked to write about. I told him of my childhood, a drunkard of a father who burned my leg severely, and wearing a brace until I was 11. How at the VA hospital in Long Beach CA, the doctors were ready to amputate it, and my momma yelling “run Philip, run!” I ran the entire 20 blocks home and the brace just broke right off of me.
That while in the Corps, my best friend died in my arms, and that I was not just the table tennis champion of my squadron, but the tennis champion also.
The movie is one of my favorites as well, even if my best friend was not Bubba, or black, or knew everything about shrimp.
Thank you for a wonderful post.
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Worth seeing this movie.🤘
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One of my favourite movie to with beautiful message given
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Omg love that movie my daughter and I must have watched it 100 times ❤️
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Only watched this film once and I cried so much that I can’t bring myself to watch it again but reading your post made me want to! Great film, and post 🙂
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Thankyou! It’s the best film ever made so watch it again!
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I never get tired of watching this film. Your post brought the memories back perfectly.
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I love Forrest Gump! Practiced the theme song on the piano and now I hum its theme song ever so often. The theme song gives me a nostalgic feeling about life, and just like in the movie – even if we are all going to die eventually, hopefully we can appreciate life’s trials and triumphs, what life offered us and amusingly, how we “blindly” forged on, just like Forrest.
“Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get!”
🤩💖😍💖🍫😘
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Completely agree with you. I learned it on piano years ago and now it’s probably the only thing i can play because i loved it so much! Thankyou for the kind message.
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Reblogged this on PTSD Beautiful Trauma and commented:
I dunno if it’s worth being happy after all these losses, Francis, I would go on to see what happens, and finding a way to move forward, but I guess that some point in your life, you go back to your self and your roots. Especially, when you start loosing things. Peace xx
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Well, it is a story that definitely shows what resilience is; and grit. I don’t think Forest was able to be happy because he was stupid. First, all that really means is that you process things more slowly; or have difficulty with cognitive processing; but everybody processes if they have a functioning brain. What it may mean however, is that he simply doesn’t over-think things. I have found that over-thinking is a major part of anxiety in general, we lose a lot of cognitive energy on it. Forest focused on the important stuff and didn’t worry about the details that didn’t matter because he didn’t have the processing capacity to do so. It was a way for him to tune out the causes of anxiety maybe.
Also, question the common conceptualization of “happiness”. Most of the time what we are shown as examples of it are actually examples of joy or euphoria; which are extreme forms of happiness (emotions and moods run on dimensional continuums). I suspected that I had depression for years until I was in a university class studying happiness among other emotions, and basically…..its closer to being a baseline, center of the scale kind of feeling. To me, its more akin to a feeling of contentment, and that seemed to be what Forrest was experiencing most of all. He had highs and lows, but they weren’t extreme; he mostly seemed to be stay on an even, centered equilibrium. And maybe that’s really the point.
We are conditioned to seek an emotion that is actually an extreme form of itself.
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