Excuse me, I need some adjustment here...

Theatrical release poster

One of the startling -- or perhaps, even comforting -- assumptions of this movie, The Adjustment Bureau based on Philip K. Dick's story Adjustment Team, is that all of us who are blessed with great ambition can be assuaged of such ambition simply by getting into an intimate and rewarding relationship!

Personally, I like this theory, and would like to use it to justify (rationalize, did I hear you say?) my raison d'être, "sit back and enjoy the world going by." After all, I do have the good fortune to be in a wonderful relationship, so why should I blame myself for not wanting to struggle.

But blame myself, I do. There's a compendium of short stories, waiting to be finished, or should I say, screaming to be finished. But the more it screams, the more I stay still. It is a surreal game of chicken in my mind.

In my less charitable moods, I often wonder, "why afflict the world with yet more words?" or "why do I write? To contribute or to seek glory?" When I lean zen-ward, I do, and don't ascribe meaning or project outcome -- the chicken-game protagonists suddenly finding themselves in different dimensions, discombobulated and purposeless -- it gives me a deep sense of fulfillment.

Back to the Adjustment Bureau, another assumption is that the more you struggle, the more you rewrite your "destiny" (the opposite of the Eastern notion of fatalism). More Prozac anyone?