This is a Korean film that illustrates realism of our love lives. It revolves around themes of failure, regret, self-realization, and acceptance. Failure because we don't get everything that we want in our lives. We set goals, dreams, and have aspirations only to fail at it. Unfortunately, there are no simplified steps at getting what you want in life. But based on my 3 decades of experience, showing up each day is a good start. But of course it is not enough. I've long envied people who pretty seem to get what they want easily, as if they did not go through hardship. I've repeatedly ask myself, what is it that they have that i don't? Or what have they done to achieve things that I've wanted? What is it I am doing wrong? Like in the movie, I felt the main character's (Hwang) regret when he lost the love of his life. He lost her over saying something that deeply upset her. And then again, this is a constant reminder of how powerful words can be.
I've had the deepest heartaches mostly on what was said to me, rather than what was done to me. My recurrent heartache lately is what one of my mentors told me roughly 7 months ago when I was unfairly extended in training. He made me feel that I did not deserve my current position as the chief resident of neurosurgery, saying and putting it into formal writing that I earned my position through seniority, and not through hard work. My insecurities resurfaced being told that. Perhaps what I lack if a solid foundation of self-confidence. If I had enough self-confidence, my self-security wouldn't have been threatened and that I wouldn't have felt really bad about it, reliving the heartache over and over again. This leads to a deeper question, how does one gain self-confidence?
Ruth Kanfer, an American Psychologist from Minessota studied self-confidence in relation to motivation. Based on her discussion, self-confidence is one's personal judgment over one's capability to achieve one's goal. She basically created a simplified model on the relationship of self-confidence to motivation stating that there are two key components to motivation, which are goal choice and self-regulation. From Learning, Remembering and Believing: Enhancing Human performance, written in 1994: "Self-regulation, in turn, consists of three related sets of activities: self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reactions. Self-monitoring provides information about current performance, which is then evaluated by comparing that performance with one's goal. The comparison between performance and goal results in two distinct types of self-reactions: self-satisfaction or -dissatisfaction and self-confidence expectations. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction is an affective response to past actions; self-confidence expectations are judgments about one's future capabilities to attain one's goal. This framework allows a discussion of self-confidence as it relates to a number of motivational processes, including setting goals and causal attributions."
Another important theory that is related to this is Banduria's self-efficacy theory, which simplified states that an individual's previous experience of successes, external factors such as, recognition from others, favorable work environment, words of encouragement, plays a key role in self-efficacy. To sum it all up, an individual's perceptions about himself and the environment, is the key to self-confidence. This plays an important role to achieve success. Having said this, I need to remind myself how much I've achieved and how far I've come in achieving my dreams. Warren Buffet writes "You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you, that means everyone else can control you. Breath and allow things to pass." Reading all of this, i sum it all up that self-confidence can only come from within, when you're in an unfavorable environment.
Going back to the film, the guy regrets losing her when he finds out that the love of is life getting married. To my surprise, he went to the wedding, not to talk her into marrying him, but to tell her things he never said before. Although this seems like a sad story, this deeply resonates with me. Lately, I've been battling with insecurity and depression because I don't seem to get the things that I want in life. However, this film drives a lesson to my core. Time passes and I can no longer bring back lost opportunities and things that I wasn't able to do. I cannot blame myself totally, knowing what I've done what I can. Sure there are days that I played it slow but every human being deserves to rest. I believe that more than others, I should give myself more credit for being here. Being able to handle both neurosurgery and my job as a writer, while surviving through renal failure is a major achievement that nobody can ever take away from me. I should forget getting recognition from others because one, not too many people know that I work to pay for my own expenses, and two, nobody will ever understand how it feels like to survive through transplant except me.
I was about to say that I did not like the ending, but thinking about how much room it provided for self-realization, all in all it is a good film!
Movie information link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Your_Wedding_Day
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