CAMOMOT - A Beautiful Mind

CAMOMOT, Kaia Louise R.
2013-17839 STS X2

     The film A Beautiful Mind is about the life of the mathematician, John Nash. It is about how his work on equilibrium and the game theory earned him a Nobel Prize. But his road to receiving that Nobel Prize wasn’t exactly an easy one. During his college years, John Nash became a schizophrenic. He started seeing people that weren’t exactly there. Imaginary, per se. This was a large hindrance to his career as a mathematician, but it did not stop him from pursuing his career, and it was well worth it.

     I learned quite a lot from this movie. One is that we should never stress ourselves too much on things that are non-existent. One of the dominating factors that triggered Nash’s schizophrenia was how he was so stressed over everything. Over school, over friends, over work, and even over his family. It caused him to start conjuring up imaginary people to suffice for those things that he was stressing about. We should always look at the positive side of things and not focus on the negative because that will always bring you down. It will not get you anywhere. Another lesson is that we should learn how to accept the things that are thrown our way. We should learn how to be content and happy with what we have, and although it is a good thing to strive for better, we should not let failure bring us down. The last thing, and I think the most important thing, that I learned is that we should never give up on the things we want to achieve in life. We should always persevere and take hindrances as challenges, not as encouragement to just drop everything you’ve worked so hard for. As seen in the film, John Nash almost gave up on his work. When he found out he had schizophrenia, all he did was stress over it and stay at home. He couldn’t even help his wife with household chores. But after realizing that what Nash was doing wasn’t really helping their situation, they did something about it. They got him back to working as a professor. It was tough at first, since he was still battling his imaginary friends, but through perseverance, he made it through. He even became a well-respected professor, and eventually, a receiver of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work on the game theory. As I said earlier, his not giving up became well worth it in the end.

     I think A Beautiful Mind is a beautiful film that can serve as a great inspiration to everyone. It was a tear-jerking film that had its ups and downs, but the happy ending made everything okay. It has a lot of lessons, and you can actually have a lot of realizations in it. For example, if John Nash made it to the end, whilst battling his schizophrenia, then why can’t we make it through the end whilst battling struggles of our own? There is always hope.