Shrek's shackle

I went to the IFC to see the morning show of Shrek Forever After. At HKD65, the ticket price was about half that of the regular shows. Not a bad deal for those who do not have to sleep until noon on a non-working day. But on the other hand, these days there is basically only the 3D version available for these animation films means that consumers are left with no choice and have to pay more. The situation is much like when the bus companies started to introduce air-conditioned buses to Hong Kong many years ago. The companies claimed that passengers still had a choice, meaning that those who did not want to pay the 40 percent extra fees (especially in winter time when air-conditioning was not necessary) could wait for a bus without aircon if they did not mind spending the time. But it soon became clear that non-aircon bus services were only available in those unprofitable lines, and even in those lines buses without aircon are so few and far between that you'd have to be out of your mind or out of this world to actually wait for one. Fairly soon, when the non-aircon buses have all 'retired', such 'choices', if you can call them that, will be gone 'forever after'. I can see the trend of 3D films developing along this line.

Back to the film itself, the moral of the fable is that one should appreciate what one has in the here and now. In Shrek's case, he got bored about his life despite having a beloved wife, lovely children and a bunch of good friends. It was when he failed to count his blessings and yearned for the life in the yester-years which he considered to be more fun and adventurous that he succumbed to temptations and messed up his life. To use Robin S. Sharma's symbol for the seventh virtue introduced in the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Shrek failed to appreciate the Path of Diamonds he was walking, and became a prisoner of the past. Likewise, we can be trapped in the past, or in the future, and fail to "embrace the present", which is what the seventh virtue is about.