Monsters

Last night I saw Phantom of the Opera at BYU with my family and it was AMAZING!! I was totally blown away by it, they did such a great job! Something about that movie always leaves me confused and unsettled though. I realized last night that it's because you're not entirely sure who you're supposed to feel sorry for. For most of the play, you feel sorry for Christine because she is being tormented by the monstrous Phantom. It isn't until the very end when the Phantom is left alone in his lair with his agony that you feel sorry for him. As I was leaving the theater thinking about this, a quote that I'm sure has plagued all of your Facebook feeds came to my mind: "We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized they were inside of us."

Who's really the monster in the story? Is it the Phantom, who murdered several people and terrorizes Parisian opera goers? Is it Christine who deserted a guide and a friend that desperately loved her? Is it society, who deemed the Phantom unworthy of love? I reached the conclusion that it's a chain of events. Society turned an innocent yet deformed boy into a heartless monster that spent his life in pursuit of revenge. The Phantom turned Christine into a hopeless monster that turned away from a teacher that loved her for an airhead best friend. We all create monsters of men and other men create monsters of ourselves. It makes you think how this relates to our time. Who turned the man who shot twenty children and six teachers in an elementary school into a monster? Who turned the terrorist who organized the most deadly attack on the United States into a monster? Who turned the school bully that inflicts terror on children his own age into a monster?

I can't really end this thought with a call to action. I've turned men into monsters myself and I know that I have a long life ahead of me to continue to do that. I know that we've all been turned into monsters to some degree by someone else and I know that we've all continued that chain of events ourselves. Just as I'm sure the people of Paris that went to a street fair to laugh at a disfigured boy didn't realize that their mocking words and laughs would create a monster that would torture them, we don't realize how our words and actions change others. Be mindful, be cautious, be kind.

Sorry if I totally ruined your day. Please enjoy this video of a girl dancing to boost your spirits again.