If you haven’t seen the movie Cabaret, stop reading this newsletter, go out immediately and rent it, go home, tell your family you don’t want to be disturbed, put it on, sit in a warm chair and get ready for a great trip.
In addition to being beautiful and entertaining, it is deeply profound. I won’t tell you the story; only that the stories revolve around a cabaret in Berlin, during the 1930s, just before the Nazis took control of Germany.
At first, the MC says that it doesn’t matter if it’s cold and ugly outside; Inside the cabaret, everything is warm and beautiful (“even the orchestra is beautiful”) and the time you spend in it is not in vain, as it will make you forget your harsh pre-war reality. And so the show begins.
The story has many twists and turns (some quite controversial) as the plot unfolds and at the end, our heroine, Sally Bowles, sings the title song, “Cabaret”. This song makes an analogy of life being a cabaret; there is no time to waste moping and being lonely. You have to come to the cabaret and enjoy the music and life.
So you can ask, “Yes?” So what? The idea is that you think about your own life and how you live it. So here are a series of questions for you to ponder and decide what is worth keeping and what should go and most importantly who to keep and who to let go.
Do you wake up and immediately give thanks for your life? Or you wake up and immediately say to yourself: “Oh no! Not another day!”
Do you look at the people you meet every day and feel blessed that they travel with you through life or do you just hate seeing them and hold on because you see no other solution? Do you look at your life partner and feel a glow of love for him or do you look at him and wonder, “What the hell am I doing with this person? I hate his guts!”
Do you think about your family and do you like to remember the great times you had together and the food you shared and the smiles on their faces or the things you remember are the arguments and bad feelings towards them?
Do you think about your work and smile thinking about how good it is to give your contribution to society in the most perfect way? Does your job seem like a lot of fun? Do you do your chores with joy? Or do you think how long it will take you to find something better that isn’t so boring and doesn’t exploit your time and talents so much?
Do you think about money and start dreaming of all the good you can do with it, fulfilling your dreams and giving it to the people and causes you love? Or do you think about money and remember all your debts and how you hate paying your bills and how much is left in your life?
And the list of questions goes on and on. You can make your own. In every situation you find yourself in, think, “How do I feel about this?” Does the answer make you smile or frown?
And then you ask yourself: “Does my life feel like I’m in a cabaret with beautiful music, entertainment, good company, joy and laughter, or does it feel like I’m in a place under the bridge where I need to stay close to you?” the barrel fire so I can keep warm?”
If your answer is the former, you know that the better it gets, the better it gets. If, on the other hand, your answer is the second, what are you going to do to change it?
It’s up to you to decide.