Rewatching Jennifer Coolidge in Austenland feels like the emotional opposite of doomscrolling—a return to safe and comforting rather than a digital conveyor belt of brand-new bad news.
Everything has a story—love, betrayal, justice. Some might discount the tremendous power of language, yet narrative shapes every aspect of daily life. The truth is just one more story—the one we must search for, that must be unearthed, that is sometimes the hardest to tell.
So much of what John Keating does in Dead Poets Society has to do with shifting one’s perspective. Believing we hold all of life’s answers heralds the death of curiosity, which feels to me like the antithesis of joy. Better, then, to keep searching. Stand on the desk and say what you can see.