Everything in Siam Has Its Own Time

Have you guys seen Anna and the King?

It’s kind of an oldie, from 1999. That’s a year after I graduated from college, and frankly I don’t like to think about how long ago that was. But to put it in perspective, the actor who played the young English boy who traveled to Siam with his mother

went on to portray Draco Malfoy in all of the Harry Potter movies, and is now 26 years old.

Unless that stubble is Photoshopped in, that little kid can grow a beard now. I am getting old.

Anyway, my midlife crisis aside, it’s a really good movie. I love period pieces, and this is set in the 1860s.

Besides being just a really great story, it’s well put together visually. I’m usually more about the dialogue in a movie than the visuals, but this one is so gorgeous that even I noticed.

I brought it up to a colleague today. We’ve both been frustrated with a particular set of problems and the fact that it seems as though they will never be fixed. Like, really frustrated. I-don’t-know-whether-to-scream-or-cry frustrated. This is no good for me, and sometimes the frustration seeps over into other areas of my life, which is no good for anybody.

For whatever reason, this movie came to mind today. Jodie Foster plays a woman who goes to Siam and expects certain things to happen. At certain times, and in certain ways. When they don’t, she grows increasingly frustrated and angry. When she finally blows up at the king’s interpreter, he tells her that everything in Siam has its own time.

In other words: You can’t do anything about it anyway. Settle down.

She does, and eventually she gets what she wanted, and learns to live with (if not love) the way things work. And I thought I should probably follow her example and settle down myself. I can’t do anything about it anyway. You should remind me if I forget:

Everything in Siam has its own time.