Learnings I gained from “Dear Zindagi” movie

Dreamer Soul
6 min readApr 13, 2024

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Jo dil se lage
Usey keh do Hi, Hi, Hi
Jo dil na lage
Usey keh do bye, bye, bye

This movie is close to me because I found it at the right time, and watching it really had an impact on my thinking. I’ll try to keep this article less of a movie review but more of what I and you can learn from the movie (even if you haven’t watched it).

A brief intro about the main characters — Kaira, a young cinematographer who has gone through some relationship ups and downs, and has faced a lot of childhood traumas, meets Dr Jehangir Khan, a psychologist who was finally able to treat her by helping her bring together the jumbled puzzle pieces of her life.

So of all the things that I could observe in this movie, below are a few I’d like to share:

  1. Choose easy things sometimes: It is not necessary that we always take a complicated path to prove ourselves, just because we have never gone easy before. Sometimes we should allow ourselves to sit back, and let our mind and body take their time and relax.
  2. We should allow ourselves to explore: Metamorphically, the movie asserted that there is nothing wrong in choosing from a set of available chairs to find the most comfortable one, and doing the same when trying to establish deep connections with people. We need to have some heartbreaks to really understand what we do not want in a relationship; sad but true.
  3. Remember the good times from your childhood often: Childhood memories do bring a smile on our face every time, whether good or bad or funny or emotional. Having a set of friends with whom you have shared a part of your childhood even makes you feel that some things actually remain constant, when everything around us is changing.
  4. Genius is someone who has the patience to find answers: We need not be a know-how of everything around us or maybe have all the answers of our lives figured out in front of us, to be called a genius. We should be willing to find them, and understand when life teaches or signals us about something or someone. Listening to our heart and taking the right decisions in the correct directions is what makes us a genius.
  5. Don’t stay in a relationship if you’re suffering: There is no point of being in any toxic friendship or relationship just for sake of not having to suffer being lonely again. Know your worth and when to step out from that toxicity, in order to let your soul breathe peacefully.
  6. Focus on your present, don’t let the past ruin your future: It’s okay to have made mistakes in the past, we all do that; but what we all don’t do is to learn from them and not repeat them for sure. Life does give us second chances, and in fact from my point of view, life keeps teaching us that same lesson, until we overcome it one day finally with a good success rate.
  7. There’s no such thing as a perfect partner: We can only look for someone to complement us and not to complete us, because we have to be complete by our own selves and just expect nothing more than love, care and respect from the other partner. Perfect relationship is not prebuilt but created when two individuals come together and strive for it consistently.
  8. We should forgive our parents for everything: Our parents might have done some mistakes during our childhood that left a deep impact on our lives and might also be obstructing our future. But holding on to these grudges towards our parents will do no good; rather, forgiving and not doing the same for our future generations would be more helpful. Afterall, they are humans too, and are living this life for the first time like us.
  9. In order to express love fully, we must express anger, hatred, sadness fully: Never be embarrassed about your grief or other negative emotions. We all have the right to feel these and express these whenever there is a upsurge. If we continue to subdue them for long, piled up emotions may burst out when we don’t want it to happen, and will not give the other person the chance to improve.
  10. Our childhood and generational traumas affect our romantic relations: Maybe we leave people, before they could leave us, because of our fears of abandonment. Maybe we chase people because we were made habitual to chase for our parents’ love in childhood, and gaining it by being perfect in our school and other work. Maybe we have some unexplained fears, which cause distress in our relationships and bind us to live a limited life. All these things and even the happenings or karma from our past lives does affect our present life and relationships, but what we can do is only to overcome them by healing.
  11. Free yourself of all your fears, they exist only in mind: Our brain is meant to keep us safe, and whenever it senses even a pinch of danger, it tries to release hormones that would help us defeat that danger, even if we do not need it. These feelings of being unsafe for long, might trigger flight or fight mode which in turn causes anxiety and other issues. We must understand that the world we are living in physically is our reality and not the one going on in our mind. Not everything will turn out to be same as the worst case scenarios created by our mind, and we can change our reality and our thoughts for sure. Don’t let temporary feelings overtake your mind.
  12. Romantic relationships should always feel comforting: An average human being interacts with almost 150 people in his life, out of which 15 remain the ones who are his/her well wishers and supporters, and the ones he/she hangouts with. But there are only top 5 people that are closest to a person, out of which the 5th (romantic relationships one) is quite variable when we haven’t yet found the one. Just like our other 4 constants, we must ensure that this one too should feel safe and happy in the gut and heart.
  13. We have multiple soulmates in a lifetime: Yes, this theory holds sense because a soulmate is a one with whom we have a fascinating level of comfort, and with whom we don’t have to explain ourselves, because they think and feel just like us. We might have one for shared musical interests, one for intellectual talks, one for chai dates, understanding ones, and then our ultimate soulmate with whom we end up, but he / she might not necessarily be a combination of all kinds of the above. We could also call it a twin flame, and that is a lot different from a soulmate.
  14. Observe your negative patterns: Being careful with our patterns of getting attached to people, and the kinds of people we usually attract in our life is very important. These patterns, if negative, should be stopped from growing always, as they will definitely teach us the same lesson all over again and hurt us ultimately.
  15. Be your own therapist: We have to bring all the pieces of our life together by ourselves only, but yes taking help from a therapist can accelerate this process and guide us in the right direction. Sometimes sharing with friends is also better, because they actually know us so very well and can point the exact patterns we repeat usually. But the inner work has to be done by our own self only, because until that is achieved, no form of therapy can guarantee its results.
  16. The right person: Just because someone helped to heal you doesn’t mean they are the one; they might be a healing soulmate sent for you, and you might see them drift away from your life when your inner work is done. Remember, the right person will definitely find you when you would have healed, and you would find his healed version too, because that’s when you too would be at the same vibration for the universe to align you on the same journey.

Overall it was a very thought-provoking movie, inspiring us to stay light hearted, and follow our heart. Above were just a few of my perceptions of the movie, and the emotions its conveyed. May have a lot more points of view too.

Hope this helps!

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Dreamer Soul

A zealous dreamer, weaving words to pour her heart down and share her thoughts and feelings hidden within the depths of her soul.