I watched The Thin Red Line for the second time today.

I didn't realize how much I missed the first time around. I'm sure I missed some things the second time too... but the parts that I did catch and the lines that I heard, they were profound. When I saw something or heard something that spoke to me, I kept thinking about it after the scene passed, so I would miss some subsequent scenes.

The film does an incredible job of capturing the tension between the light and darkness of life... how these two coexist and they do not favor one person over another. How they are both in all people. And how they make us all intrinsically the same. Whether or not the world calls us good or bad. No one is exempt from suffering... or joy. It seems that some people experience more of one and less of the other that it tends to get mistaken for entitlement or deservedness.

I missed an intense scene with a man's face in the ground the first time I watched the film. Are you compassionate? Are you kind? Are you loved by all? Know that I was too. Do you imagine that you will suffer less because you loved goodness and truth? This line was so memorable, I rewound and watched the scene again, and then somehow the line stayed with me throughout the film. I started tearing up from that point on.... pretty much until the end of the movie.

That part then flows into a scene of gunfire and a chaos of killing... This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night? This line, this scene... reminded me - it's in all of us. And we try to hide it. Avoid it. Put it out of our minds. We try to pretend it's not in us. Not ME. I don't kill. I don't destroy. I don't rape.

But if I am the same... this great evil. It's in me. This whole thing, it started to sink in when I realized I am just as capable of killing a human being as that murderer in prison. I was violated on the train a few months back. It wasn't the first time, but in the past I was too afraid to say anything. Didn't want to cause a scene. But this time, when he continued to touch me, I tried to grab his hand and started to run after him. I gave up after a second or two because I was tired. Of dealing with this shit. I felt so violated. I wanted to give up. Just cry. I did. I was angry. That day as I couldn't get the situation out of my mind, I realized, if I had a weapon, I would not have hesitated to use it against him. And I realized at that moment, I am capable of killing. That violator and I... at the end of the day, the same depravity is in all of us. We are the same.

Everything, a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.

(all italicized quotes above from "The Thin Red Line")