There’s a quote often attributed to Jim Carrey that I’ve never been able to forget:
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
If that’s not the answer… then what is?
We grow up believing in a few simple formulas:
- Dreams = happiness
- Money = safety
- Passion = fulfilment
These are the equations that keep us moving forward. They help us survive boring school days and confusing teenage years. We tell ourselves: One day, when I get there, everything will finally make sense.
But what happens when you actually reach some of those places?
What happens when you get the job you wanted, earn more than before, achieve a dream you once thought was impossible—and somehow, deep inside, it still doesn’t feel like “enough”?
You’d think fulfilment would come with achievement. Yet there’s always a small echo inside that says, “Now what?”
Pixar’s Soul explores this in a gentle but devastating way. Joe, the main character, spends his whole life believing that playing jazz on stage is his ultimate purpose. His whole identity is built around that one dream. When he finally gets the chance and performs, he expects fireworks inside his soul—a grand, life-changing moment. Instead, it ends quietly. Everyone goes home. The street is the same. The sky is the same. His life is… still his life.
He asks, “So what happens next?”
And the band leader simply says, “We come back tomorrow and do it again.”
No divine light. No permanent internal transformation. Just another day.
Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation leans into the same emptiness from a different angle. The characters in that film aren’t poor, or struggling to survive. They are in fancy hotels, surrounded by neon lights and endless distractions—but inside, they feel disconnected. They have “made it” in the outward sense, yet something feels missing. They drift through the city like ghosts, unable to name what they’re searching for.
It’s a strange kind of loneliness—the emptiness that arrives after you achieve something you were sure would complete you.
We’re often told that reaching the top is the goal. But nobody tells us what to do when we get there and discover… it’s just another ledge.
So we keep asking the question, quietly, sometimes guiltily:
- What is success, really?
- What happens after I “make it”?
- What if happiness isn’t hiding in a job, a salary, or a title?
- What if I do everything right and still feel lost?
For some, the answer seems to be: Maybe I just need less. A simpler life. A quieter one.
For others, it seems to be: Maybe I need more. I’m not pushing hard enough yet.
And in that confusion, we stand between two worlds—ordinary and extraordinary, simple and grand, peaceful and restless—without knowing which one is truly ours.
We are all, in some way, stuck in Jim Carrey’s paradox:
Trying to figure out what to do when our old definition of “enough” stops working.
The Two Lives: Simple Days and Restless Hearts
There’s a small, quiet film called Perfect Days. On paper, it sounds like the kind of life people in big cities joke about when they say, “I’d die of boredom.”
The main character wakes up at the same time every morning.
Waters his plants.
Drives to work.
Cleans public toilets.
Listens to old music in his van.
Reads a book.
Goes to sleep.
Repeat.
Day after day, nothing “big” happens. No dramatic break-ups. No sudden success. No awards. No glamorous dinners. And yet, he radiates something most of us struggle to touch—a quiet, grounded contentment.
He doesn’t seem like he’s running from anything. He isn’t chasing image or status. He just lives, fully, gently, inside each small moment.
When his sister shows up and criticizes his life—implying that someone like him should aim for more—it doesn’t feel like she’s right. It feels like she’s trapped in a different prison: the constant race, the never-enough mindset, the idea that worth must always be proven.
She is surrounded by the same noise most of us live in, and he has stepped out of it.
Perfect Days suggests that for some people, meaning doesn’t come from having a grand life. It comes from loving an ordinary one.
And then, on the other side, there are films like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Here is a man stuck in monotony—but unlike the toilet cleaner in Perfect Days, he is not at peace with it. His mind is elsewhere, constantly escaping into fantasies of adventures, battles, heroism, romance. His body is present in the office, but his soul is climbing mountains in Iceland.
When he finally steps into the real adventure, his life changes—not because he becomes famous or rich, but because he finally aligns his outer life with his inner restlessness. He was not meant to stay still.
Good Will Hunting is another version of this tension. Will, a janitor at MIT, secretly possesses a genius-level mathematical mind. He could live a small, steady life, ignoring his potential. He could keep drinking with his friends, working simple jobs, and never risking anything. But his best friend Chuckie tells him one of the most honest lines in the film: if Will is still in the same place in twenty years, Chuckie will regret ever having known him.
Why? Because wasting that much potential isn’t just “a choice.” It’s almost a crime against yourself.
And then there’s Spider-Man, with its famous line:
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
If you have certain gifts—intelligence like Will, imagination like Walter, kindness like the man in Perfect Days, or even a small talent for making people feel seen—do you have the right to ignore them completely?
If you are capable of more, are you allowed to live a small life just because you’re scared?
But at the same time, if you are tired, broken, overwhelmed by expectations—are you allowed to step back and live simply without feeling guilty?
This is where the real conflict lies—not between “simple life” and “big life,” but between escaping yourself and honoring yourself.
- Some people escape by hiding in comfort.
- Some people escape by hiding in constant ambition.
Both can be forms of running away.
There is no rule that says:
- If you’re talented, you must chase greatness nonstop.
- If you’re burnt out, you must live quietly forever.
The harder, more honest question is:
What kind of life matches who you are right now—not who others think you should be?
Thorfinn Between Two Lives — Running Toward, Not Away
This is where Thorfinn from Vinland Saga walks into the room.
At the beginning of his life, he is the opposite of the Perfect Days man. His life is all chaos, battle, and revenge. No stillness, no calm mornings, no potted plants or jazz cassettes. Only one obsession: kill the man who killed his father.
His “purpose” is clear, sharp, and bloody. And for years, it sustains him. He survives on boats, in frozen lands, in war camps—because purpose can feed you, even when it is poisonous.
But when that purpose is finally taken away from him… he collapses. Not physically, but internally. There is this terrifying emptiness inside him. The war ends, but he doesn’t know who he is without it. He tried to live entirely as a “restless soul”—only motion, only fight, only forward—but he had no idea what he was moving toward.
Thorfinn is the perfect example of what happens when we worship only one side of ourselves. He never questioned whether his goal was truly his own. He never paused to ask: “If I actually achieve this, what kind of person will I become?”
In Season 2, we see him slowly rebuild a different kind of life—one closer to the Perfect Days man than the warrior boy he used to be. He farms. He works with his hands. He laughs sometimes. He apologizes. He has nightmares, but he also learns to wake up from them.
What makes Thorfinn so powerful as a character is that he doesn’t escape either side of himself. He carries the weight of his past and the desire for a peaceful future at the same time. He doesn’t deny the warrior he was, but he refuses to be ruled by that version of himself ever again.
At one point, when asked why he chooses not to fight, he says that from now on, if someone comes to kill him, he will do just one thing: he will run.
Not out of cowardice—but out of responsibility.
Because he knows now that every act of violence creates echoes—trauma, revenge, grief—that live on long after the sword is put away. Running is not avoidance; it is refusing to add more noise to a world already deafened by screams.
Thorfinn is neither the peaceful toilet cleaner from Perfect Days nor the reckless dreamer from Walter Mitty. He is something in between—a man who has seen what happens when you chase only one kind of life to its extreme. His peace is hard-earned, scarred, and imperfect.
And that is what makes his answer so powerful.
He doesn’t say:
- “Everyone should live simply.”
- Or “Everyone should chase big dreams.”
Instead, his life says something else:
You must face what you’ve been running from.
You must carry what you’ve done.
And then you must choose a life that does not repeat the same harm.
He isn’t just trying to “find happiness” anymore. He is trying to live in a way that doesn’t destroy him—or others—again.
In a way, Thorfinn answers Jim Carrey’s paradox for himself.
Riches, fame, revenge, power—none of them were the answer.
But neither was total escape.
The real answer was this:
To live a life he can stand to remember.
Not a perfect life.
Not a grand life.
A life that feels honest when he looks back at it.
And maybe that’s what we are all secretly trying to build.
Closing — A Life You Can Stand to Remember
In the end, maybe life isn’t asking us to choose between a simple routine and a grand adventure. Maybe it isn’t asking us to chase greatness endlessly or to shrink ourselves into something smaller. Maybe it isn’t even asking us to “find the right life.”
Maybe it’s only asking us to find an honest one.
A life where we are not running from ourselves.
A life where we stop pretending we are okay with things that kill us slowly.
A life where we stop chasing things just because others say we should.
A life where we hold our own truth gently, even when it’s messy.
Some days, you will be the man from Perfect Days—content in routine, grateful for a quiet morning light on your window.
Some days, you will be Walter Mitty—heart racing, feet itching, dreaming of more.
Some days, you will feel like Will Hunting—terrified of your own potential, unsure whether to rise or hide.
Some days, you will feel like the characters of Lost in Translation—successful on the outside, and strangely hollow inside.
And some days… you will feel like Thorfinn—lost between the person you were, and the person you hope to become.
All of them are you.
All of them are valid.
All of them are part of this strange, painful, beautiful journey of finding yourself.
And maybe the point is not to reach the perfect answer, perfect identity, or perfect life.
Maybe the point is simply to keep walking toward the version of you that feels truest—
the one who harms less, loves better, listens more deeply, and can finally breathe inside their own skin.
In the end, finding yourself is not a destination.
It’s the courage to live a life you won’t regret when the years turn into memories.
A life you can stand to remember.
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