Every Second Counts

"Oh, to wake up grateful for the pulse in my neck; to meet the mirror without dread.

I need to be enough — for myself."

A couple of months back, I binged this TV series called "The Bear". It was recommended to me by my manager, he commented that it's a show where you as a viewer always feel stressed because of the way the characters interact with each other. It's always very fast-paced, tension filled scenarios with people screaming/shouting at each other for no apparent reason. You start to wonder why are they acting like that…

Anyways there's a character in the show named Ritchie, when the show started I was very annoyed at his behavior but as time goes on, the creators unpeel his character like the layers of an onion. You realise that he lashes out constantly because of his perceived charactersation of himeself as a loser in the eyes of others. He's not financially successful, has a failed marriage and has lost his best friend to suicide. By all accounts, not a happy life.

But the saddest part of his misery is his reaction to himself, from what I understood he harbors a deep hatred towards himself. Coming to why I started writing this, there's a very well done episode (my favourite one of the show) s02e07, where he goes to a famous restautrant as a stage to hone his skills. Initially he's very despondent about the whole ordeal since he feels that he was sent away so that he is not a hurdle in the main character's plans.

Over time, while working with the folks there, his outlook towards what he's doing slowly shifts. He starts to appreciate the fact that he gets to serve people and understands the value of his work. In there though, is a scene where his ex-wife calls him to let him know that someone else has proposed to her. This is where you see him completely break down and his real cause of misery unmasks itself.

He has a deep hatred towards himself, he laments the situation he's in, cursing the fact that all the people he's loved have slowly drifted away from him. He feels alone and lost, drifting through life with nothing to live for. But this is where the entire setup of this episode is very well executed for me, in the one week training he goes through, he slowly starts to realise that maybe the servitude to the customers in the restaurant is what he's suited for, and taking pride in that fact rather than feeling ashamed of it might be the way for him to move on and maybe extract a little happiness from life.

Through the interactions he has with the people there, his outlook slowly starts to shift and you start rooting for him, I wish the show explored such progressions a bit more rather than leaning too much into the fighting dramatisation. The picture shared above is from the restaurant where he trains.