Ikiru is a Good movie

There is a bit of knowledge I really stand conflicted on...and it's something that has really played with my life as I experiment with it.

Let me do some leading up before I explain it:
As the title states, Ikiru is a good movie. It's a movie directed by my favorite director, Akira Kurosawa. The story is about an old man working in the bureaucratic system of city management in Japan. He's over PR I believe. As the story starts to take off, the main character is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in a time and place where treatment for it was improbable. --He was given a diagnosis that he would die essentially.
At the sight of death, he realizes that he has done nothing with his life and he wants to experience things he should have done. He meets a drunkard writer who has "seen the world" and becomes his guide on the journey he begins. He also meets a young girl who worked under him in the city system and who needs his permission to quit her job (japanese laws, mleh).
To summarize the rest of the movie, the man goes through MANY phases of riotous living and falling for this young girl and realizes she's creeped out by him because he's old and she's young, but at the same time she pities him. He hits rock bottom (this all takes place in like a weeks time I believe) and then comes to the realization that although he is going to die, he can make a difference in the world and he sets out to help other people with the final days of his life. He sacrifices many things and then passes away. At his funeral he gets no credit or confused credit (the people whose lives he touched honor him, but everyone else doesn't see it and they think he was foolish). But you walk away from the movie feeling empowered that you can make a difference --the movie is VERY persuasive and I love it deeply.

At one point though, there is scene where the character remembers a song--I can't recall the exact quote of the movie but the main line is: life is brief, fall in love maidens.

(I'll insert the quote if I can find it):

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,
Before the tides of passion cool within you,
For those of you who know no tomorrow.

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before his hands take up his boat,
Before the flush of his cheeks fades,
For those of you who will never return here.

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before the boat drifts away on the waves,
Before the hand resting on your shoulder becomes frail,
For those who will never be seen here again.

Life is brief. Fall in love, maidens,
Before the raven tresses begin to fade,
Before the flame in your hearts flicker and die,
For those to whom today will never return.


--- Essentially the meaning I take from the song is that you should fall in love before the person you love is gone and you are too.
I can tell you now that I have never felt so human as when I watched that movie. It brought out a lot of emotions in me and thoughts and divine potential and many other things that tell me I am alive, this life is real, and that I make a difference in it, but the conflict I face in life centers around just that song, and I shall attempt to paint a picture of how and why it centers around that song.

I've always been lonely in life. I don't know if it is because of some event that happened while I was young, but as far back as I can remember I have had this innate desire to be loved by other people. I needed attention, but not just attention, I needed people who I could turn to on a regular basis for emotional support. I spent a lot of my childhood trying to impress my parents, trying to be popular at school and have friends, even trying to be around my brother and sister, because I was lonely.
I hate being alone.
Yet all of my life I have felt very much alone. I have had to do everything on my own, I've been left on my own so often, and I have felt, at times, as though no one out there cared for me. I went through a part of my life where I was very much my only friend, or at least I was the only one who paid any attention to me. And this loneliness has molded and shaped me.
I pursued various things and learned many things simply because no one was listening to me, no one was watching me, no one was doing anything with me really. I just existed and I hit a point where I contemplated suicide, but faced with death in that sense, I decided I needed to change my life around somehow, and that's what started my learning process.
The problem was that while I was going through that stage of life, I stopped caring about other people. I gave up a great part of my own humanity it seemed. I stopped feeling emotions because I was hurt so bad--and it wasn't just a one time hurt, it was years compounding together of me being the youngest son who was never good enough, whose friends turned their backs on me, whose own brothers and sisters were always fighting with me and who just didn't fit in the world anywhere.

In one sense I died back then.
No one who knew me back then would know me now. My personality is very different. I have confidence now, I have self esteem and self worth, and yet, I still face the same problems that I have always faced: I strive for attention and I have a strong desire to be loved.

I have experimented with various things in an attempt to fulfill those two great needs of mine, but for the past few years I have had a hard time feeling them.

So with that in mind, when I say that I have a conflict with the line: "life is short, fall in love maidens [and young men]", it is because my whole life I have tried to be loved and yet, as Eminem says "[I] get no love".
I have had very many successes, I've developed a good character, I've mastered a lot of admirable traits, and I've gained a vision of what I would like to become. Yet every day I wake up and I'm all alone. Nothing I do with my own hands warrants love and attention. I have more enemies than I have friends, and then I realize that the only thing that gets me through the day is that I have hope for the future--a hope that fades with each day.
I feel as though I have gone beyond what that song says. I feel as though I'm too old to experience love the way I would like because I'm too serious now and I don't get excited very easily. ad hock: I'm out there trying to teach people skills they need to just fall in love while they're young and save themselves the problems i have faced.

I very much feel like an expensive violin that has a flaw in it and no one wants to take it or can afford it. I'm just waiting for someone to come along who realizes my worth who can fix me up and turn me into one of the best violins on the market.