Embracing Fiction

It is like no other.

A review / thought piece, spoiler-free: ↓

It is like Tuesdays with Morrie - yet with a modern, romantic arc.

A review / thought piece, spoiler-free:

It is light and heavy. It is happy and sad. It is about life and death. It is about love and fear.

Tightly written, deeply felt.

What a journey that was.

Review with major spoilers:

It is like many but also unlike many - with the respect it showed and the sense of ceremony it bestowed to a girl’s story of growing up.

A thought piece:

One excellently told.

A thought piece with a semblance of a review - or the other way around:

A thought piece:

A review, spoiler-free:

#MeetYourself is about our generation - we who are blindly chasing happiness as defined by the world: in career, money, romance.

All while never understanding what happiness personally to us truly looks like.

It dove deep into the reality of our society – one that thrives in sound and is uneasy with silence. It dove deep into the lives of people who are unable to join in that culture of sound and the people who choose to love them despite.

It was a quiet drama that spoke volumes. It was a drama about not hearing that taught how to listen.

A thought piece:

Romance peaked here - and with so much depth at that.

His newly bought CD. Her old note for him. Their shared love for Spitz. Them walking home together. Her learning his new language. Him teaching her.

Her directing 'always' to him - as if telling him, herself, what he means to her.

My heart was bursting at the seams.

I absolutely loved how the drama delivered this Sou arc.

How full of sincerity, of empathy they told the story of Sou and his family - it spoke the stories of real people whom they represented.

Their pains. Their helplessness. The way they were forced to just go through with it - no matter how long the process took. In all these, it is usually the mother who bears the most pain, yet at the same time, exhibits the most strength. And the drama showed us this.

For Sou and his family, it took them eight years to get here. To finally have their son, their brother return. In those eight years, it was his mom who pained the most. She was suffering because her child was suffering - it was a burden she, like any mother, was most willing to bear. But she could not afford to break down - she had to be strong not only for him but also for her other children. When he later chose to leave her care, she could only keep standing, arms tirelessly outstretched, warm and open for him to return to - when he is ready.

What a poignant understanding of what motherhood is. And I highly appreciated it.

I may not be a mother but I am a child. And for a child, what mom did for Sou means the world.

And it means the same for Sou. That is why every time he thanked her, he would always try to speak the words. Using his voice makes him uncomfortable but he knows the spoken language is what is most comfortable for his mom so he makes the extra effort for her.

That's how much he means it.

This ep was about Sou and his journey of loving himself - including his hardness of hearing.

For years, he had a difficult time accepting himself - he who is now deaf and the things that come with it. The perception that he is now less of the person whom he was before, whom he could have become. All the worries, the hassle it would bring upon his family and friends and the fact that no matter how much they worry, all of it would be futile - they could not make him hear again.

It was only when he recognized that it was not his capacity to hear, or the lack thereof, that defined him - or Minato's friendship with him, or Tsumugi's affection for him, or his mother's love for him. (All credits go to them for not giving up on him.)

He finally realized that it was Sakura Sou whom they all loved, not only Hearing Sou. And it was he himself, Sakura Sou, who defined Sakura Sou. Sakura Sou is much more than Hearing Sou.

In regaining love for all that he is, Sou consequently learned to re-embrace his love for music despite being unable to hear. Because he finally realized that he loved music not only because of its sound but also the message it sought to deliver.

His love for music is part of him and he will not deny himself of it even if having lost his capacity to hear its sound.

Because the music he likes is more than its sound.

Watching Silent is like peeling an onion. We peeled layer after layer throughout ep 1-8 and now, in ep 9, we have reached its innermost core: Sou.

We had seen glimpses of Sou's struggle with his hearing loss when the story was told in the perspectives of Tsumugi, Minato, and Nana. But this was the very first time we delved into his pains.

And how gutting his pains were.

I bawled like a fucking baby. And I'm not even Sou.

More proof of this drama's poetic, masterful writing.

These are from two separate scenes, but if you tie them together, they give you an answer.

And I think this really was Nana's answer to Haruo-san's question.

This drama is so poetic and episode 8 is its latest proof.

At the very start of episode 8, Sou finally revealed why he chooses to not use his voice - because he could not confirm if what he says gets through. It is his great fear to be not heard, to be not listened to.

Now at the very end of this episode, after their heart-to-heart conversation, Tsumugi chooses to tease Sou. She feigns that she cannot understand his question.

Am I not getting through to her? Perhaps that's what rang in his mind. His fear was rearing its head. And this was the person whom he wants to get through to the most.

Then Tsumugi breaks into a smile. Of course, he got through. Of course, she understood. Of course, she heard him.

She always have.

This is communication at its finest.

And note how this was done all through sign language. This singlehandedly proved that speech and hearing are not the only tools for communication - if both sides are sincerely willing to speak and listen whatever the means, they will get through.

This entire episode - with all its conversations between the deaf and the hearing - reminded me of a quote from Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled (1978) about listening:

"Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. ... True listening, total concentration on the other, is a manifestation of love. An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes. ... It never becomes an effortless process."

Listening is love in action. Because love, in its very essence, is effortful.