The Confidence To Live

Rating: 10/10 (24 August 2015)

Adolescense. This is a potentially magical time in someone's life. A youth is taught that adulthood will be a time in which all your hard work will pay off. That a successful life is one in which you marry, start a family, find a steady productive job and in doing all of these things a person will find happiness. Many people go down this road with optimism and enthusiasm. At the onset of this journey some elements go well and then reality hits and it hits hard. It becomes more difficult to relate to people around you, professional life is discovered to be a frustrating process and life in general hands a person setback after setback.
It is easy to allow the people around us to affect us on such an intimate emotional level that it is possible to never recover from it. A person may have a strong support group early on though at some point, things in life get taken away and at some point a person may realize that life is not what they thought it would be. It can be very difficult for a person to find the courage to continue on their chosen path.
These messages are the heart, body and soul of the film Rocky. Not only does the titular character have to reach deep inside himself in order to pull himself out of the life of shame and minimization in order to face life's challenges but he also find his own self worth and confidence in order to set his life back on track. In fact all the supporting characters have experienced disappointment or emotional damages in their life that has led them to having a lesser quality of life.
Rocky's girlfriend had been dominated by her older brother all of her life and was just naturally shy. She avoids contact with everybody around her and lives a very isolated life until her brother Paulie forces her to go on a date with Rocky. They find that they are kindred spirits and are then inseparable. She begins to change emotionally when she begins to realize that she can be loved and be loved by someone who will not mistreat her in any way. Her brother Paulie, who spends most of his time between fits of anger or drunken has allowed his life to become absolutely stagnant by settling into a dead end job and forgetting how to take care of himself without Adrian's help and in the end Rocky's.
Finally, Rocky's trainer Mick who has already lived through the prime of his life is aware of his mortality and wants to know that he is still useful.
It is only when a person is stretched to their limit that they have to look within their self and rediscover their self worth. It is the power of self worth and confidence that allows anybody to accomplish anything that brings about positive change. It is positive change that can bring about happiness as a direction in life brings meaning and importance.