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My Life is a Series of Plan B


Every time the movie The Martian comes on TV, I watch it.  It does not matter how much of it I have missed.  I love it all.  I have the book on my TBR pile but have not had the time to read it.  I hear it is better than the movie, but for now, it is me and Matt Damon.
I love the character Mark Watney and I love the way Matt Damon portrays him.  The determination of the human spirit to succeed against steep odds speaks to me.  At the end of the movie, when Mark Watney introduces himself to the astronaut candidates, he voices the theme of the movie: to succeed in life, you solve one problem, then the next, then another, and so on.
I totally agree.  Life is a mixture of courage and confidence.  Courage is the embodiment of all the good traits inside a person, and confidence is trusting in those traits to get the job done, no matter how impossible, uncomfortable, or challenging.
Life is never giving up hope. It is Plan B after Plan A blows up in your face, followed by Plan C and D and so on until you run out of alphabet and you start using numbers. It is fighting until the very end.
I have had my share of challenges, some sad and some silly.  All of them have made my life memorable.  One key I use when in doubt is to ask myself, “If I do not do this, will I regret it?”  If the answer is yes, then I find the courage or the confidence to try.  It does not always get me the result I wanted, but I have never regretted trying.
One of the most amazing secondary themes of the movie The Martian is the resilience of the character.  He persists with patience and hope and humor. And grace. He knows himself better than anyone.  He knows what he needs to keep going.  He depends on himself, his intelligence and perseverance, and he goes to it in a methodical manner. At the end when he cries, it is because all his sacrifice pays off. 

Life is never giving up on yourself. 
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