Colorful

**I definitely recommend you watch it if you have not already, but here is my perspective of what happens in the movie so there may be spoilers for the sake of explaining.

I want my life to paint a beautiful picture. I want to live...colorfully. This simple word stirs my heart so much, and I am continually trying to find meaning in this adjective which is chosen to be the title name for a beautiful movie. It is a story of self-discovery, growing up, and finding purpose in living. In the animated film Colorful, our main character, Makoto, is introduced as as soul who has dead and is offered a second chance at life. He was told his soul will not be entered into the body of someone who also died. This body was a boy who had just committed suicide by an overdose of pills. Makoto was given the task of trying to uncover the greatest sin or mistake in his former life which led him to death. Through the movie, our main character discovers how the life of the boy he now lives is quite painful--there are broken family, broken relationships, yet there is a familiarity of the suffering he endures in both his home and at school. With the stress of thinking about life after school and of circumstances, Makoto sees how much despair this boy was in. With nowhere else to turn in a suffering life, this boy ends up with blood stained hands--hands used to end his own life. The boy convinced himself he did not have a future and took matters into his own hand by ending his story. The movie made me stop and see what the world would look like through the eyes of people who feel utterly hopeless. It is a feeling, that resonates with so many people: when life begins to fade to a bland, dark, monochrome shade. Living becomes so excruciating when you are in so much pain, when you keep failing, when you can see no point, no purpose, in life and you want so desperately for it to end. You want so desperately to disappear, for the pain to end.

Yet, this is not the end of the story. As the movie approaches to an end, almost like a semicolon both Makoto and the boy's story goes on. At the end of the movie, Makoto announces that he has found out what his former life's mistake was. He discovers that the body was his own body to begin with, that it was him who had ended his own life. He was able to see his life from an 'outside' perspective, in a sense, yet even though he saw the pain and saw his story unraveling, he identified suicide as a mistake. When the main character was able to relive his life see his life as a whole, he caught a glimpse of all the color in his life. Each stroke in his life is comprised of vibrant colors, memories of happiness, sadness, anger, all mixed to paint a beautiful picture. A beautiful piece which is life, that is still in progress of being painted only by continuing to live on.

I believe many can relate to feelings of uncertainty and helplessness when life becomes unbearable, and to me this movie sort of helps illustrates how I visualize and see my own life. We may not know our true colors, we do not know or understand where our life is headed but there is a Creator who has a plan for us. God is our artist and we can simply glance over our lives to see His mark in our life. For me, I am always turning to people for affirmation, for a sense of purpose, success, blindly seeking happiness but finding that none of it satisfies my soul which quenches after God. With God in our lives, we can progress colorfully and live colorfully by painting a beautiful picture we cannot see. We cannot even begin to imagine how much beauty is in our lives, but when Christ died on the cross his sacrifice means we can live this new, beautiful, purposeful life. We can die to ourselves, the selfish, corrupted part of us, and we have a new desire born within us, a new purpose because we are no longer utterly hopeless. There is so much beauty in that, and our paintings, our lives are all different but all a testimony of His love, His work and His glory. If life is suffocating and you see no purpose, fight the lies that your life has no purpose. THEY ARE ALL LIES. Never ever give up, and live to see His purpose and live to experience the joy that God gives us, shows us through His gift of life.