Paradise can go f**k itself

“Paradise can go f**k itself.” – now that’s not something you hear bandied about everyday…normally folks are clamouring to get into paradise, but George Clooney’s Matt King (in Alexander Payne’s ‘The Descendants’) has had enough of paradise. He’s done with it. And who can blame him?

Y’see, Matt King lives in paradise – on a small island just off of Hawaii – but paradise gets turned upside down and inside out when he’s forced into becoming more to his two daughters than the absentee parent he had been used to.

For Matt, paradise gets turned around because his wife was involved in an accident which has left her in a coma that she won’t wake up from…which is pretty shitty in itself, but then his eldest daughter (played the fantastic Shailene Woodley) drops the bombshell that his wife has been cheating on him for some time…when it rains it pours, right?? So I think we can all forgive Matt for being less than enchanted with paradise...

But it’s worth a thought though…what good would paradise be without your own personal pieces of paradise? Your partner…your inside jokes...your memories…your love…surely these are the things that add meaning to, or even create, paradise? I mean God knows I love the sun, the surf and the sea – these are the most rejuvenating and liberating of nature’s wonders, but what would paradise be if you couldn’t personalise it? It would be like Christmas without the crackers; winter without hot water bottles; mum’s cooking without your mum cooking it…paradise is only paradise if we’ve got all of our personal prizes with us – and if we haven’t got that, what good would it be?

Besides, am I the only one who suspects that paradise might be just a bit boring? I mean if you’ve got everything you’re looking for, what would you have to search for once you’re there?? After all, isn’t the idea and the hope of our heart’s desires the thrill of life? Isn’t the chase infinitely more exciting than the getting there?? Well I think so at any rate, so I’m gonna side with Matt King on this one; “Paradise can go f**k itself” – I’m more than happy with the idea of paradise (for now…)