Which "R" are you filled with?

The Buddy and Elle sequence in Kill Bill made the most lasting impression on me as a film connoisseur. Buddy poses a question to Elle: “So, now that you're not gonna have to face your enemy no more on the battlefield, which 'R' ya filled with: Relief - or Regret?”

But it’s neither of the two, Bud.

There’s a rabbit hole within the parameters of warriors, enemies, or lovers.

There’s this thing called r e j e c t i o n.

It sits in Elle’s driver's seat. The very thing she’s been running away from, driving her into an endless pursuit of retribution. Probably a lifelong yearning for Bill’s attention that she cannot have.

‘Which R are ya filled with?’ That question keeps resounding in my mind, over and over again.

Like a melody stuck in your head, however, it amplifies itself in ways you cannot see.

That R, the resounding R that keeps you at bay, that translates into passive actions; that hides as altruism and ends up consuming you.

Sometimes you experience it firsthand, most times, you do it yourself.

At some point in our lives, we’ve all been rejected—

Like not making the last order before Potato Corner closes.

Not meeting your parents’ expectations, so you cope by surrounding yourself with people.

Being left alone to carry a responsibility that’s not yours.

Being put on a pedestal by someone you love, only to be discarded.

Rejection comes in different packages.

Rejection feels like a door closed, and you can’t go in nor out. It’s just there. You’re left hanging by a thread, but there’s no thread to begin with.

You feel it but don’t want to see it. You don’t want to mind it. Because the illusion of being accepted is better than the reality of being rejected. But the opposite of rejection is not acceptance—it’s

i n t i m a c y.

Not the intimacy in your mind, but the intimacy of being real and vulnerable. It’s allowing people to see who you really are despite your darkness. Your sins, your weaknesses, your mistakes, and so on.

But somehow, along those lines of intimacy, we cling to our fears of getting rejected.

Who on earth wants to be rejected?

I guess there’s One on earth who faced rejection like hell. Real hell.

“A man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”

His familiarity with pain might have driven Him to madness, but He held on to a goal: to set people free from the eternal pain of rejection.

The pain that we hold onto has been softened from an eternal blow into the assurance of a better tomorrow—

or better yet, an intimate one.

Are you still afraid of the big R? You bet.

Bet your bottom dollar that I still walk on eggshells while undermining my own thoughts.

I still cling to things that I hope for—

or unseeingly live every day as if I am not faced with rejection.

Is it a matter of pride or ego that we hold onto things?

The things we think might carry us into some kind of freedom, when all along,

we’ve been locking ourselves in the walls of rejection;

to prevent ourselves from the pain it inflicts, or rather from the pain we want to inflict.

And yet, there’s this intimacy in the deepest depths that wants to break the walls of rejection.

Real freedom.

And I mean, Real.

Not the kind that hides you from rejection but the kind that sticks with you, stays in the midst of it;

The One who’ll walk with you through the painstaking mundane.

But then again you can live in your mind though a looking glass

and you can always ask yourself,

“which R are ya filled with?”