The Princess Bride

I am doing a challenge to write 500 words a day, so I’m going to use my blog for this and have a record of what I wrote for 27 days.This will also help me to get ready for November when I entered another challenge to write even more words per day.

I know this is kind of cliché, but I have to add in my favorite movie/book of all time. I remember watching this movie for the first time when I was around 13 years old. I was staying at a friend’s house and we watched it together, for some reason I don’t remember liking the movie then as much as I do now. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve watched it, and since my husband bought me the DVD for my birthday many years ago, I have watched it a lot more and it never gets old to me.

I am reading the book for the first time and it has me just as spell-bound as the movie does, although the book goes into more detail than the movie…as usual. The version of the book in the photo also cuts out a lot of the parts that are not as interesting, so that adds to my liking. Note to self, if I ever write a book, don’t get caught up in boring details that no one cares about just to make my book longer. I would rather have a really good short book, than a really boring long book.

As I sit here watching the movie on the tv,  I wonder why I like this book so much, and the one answer that comes to mind is the simplicity of the story. True love is simple, it is our human minds that complicate it; adventure is simple, unless our human minds complicate that as well.

I find that my life is simple when I don’t complicate it with my own expectations, expectations of what my husband should do, expectations of how my kids should act, expectations of how my life should go, and on and on. Expectations are defined as a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future. I have found that expectations only bring suffering when they don’t work out, so I am trying to live each day without any expectations of how I think it should be.

I can’t recommend this book enough, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Not everyone likes simple and seek to live more simple lives, there are those people who enjoy complicated books, and that is fine. This book is a reminder to me of simple, the simple love between Buttercup and Westley, simple adventure with Westley and Buttercup putting one foot in front of the other and facing what each moment brings into their paths without expectations of how it should go. I don’t see simple as boring or a life without stuff, I see it as a life without expectations and just accepting what comes our way with gratitude.