Zietgeist - Rupert Friend - Man vs. Machine (Joel Stein)

Okay really weird title, but a lot of weird stuff came my way today, and that was even before I set foot outside my door!  I was reading 10 Questions for Joss Whedon in Time Magazine and I saw the word Zeitgeist.  I mean I had heard that word many times before, but never really looked up the definition.  So today, immersed in the context of that article, I became intrigued and JUST had to look it up. So, I did, on Wikipedia.

The Zeitgeist (spirit of the age or spirit of the time) is the intellectual fashion or dominant school of thought that typifies and influences the culture of a particular period in time.

More from Wikipedia:  According to Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, "When the Zeitgeist, God in Time," which India calls 'Kāla', "moves in a settled direction, then all the forces of the world are called in to swell the established current towards the purpose decreed. That which consciously helps, swells it, but that which hinders swells it still more, and like a wave on the windswept Ocean, now rising, now falling, now high on the crest of victory and increase, now down in the troughs of discouragement and defeat, the impulse from the hidden Source sweeps onward to its preordained fulfillment".

I like that.  Purpose decreed. Preordained fulfillment. 

I have been told that the only reason I will notice the same things seemingly happening over and over again (...like a wave on the windswept ocean, now rising, now falling...) is because I have set it in my head to notice that thing or certain occurrence.  I don't know how true that is, but the brain is a funny thing.  So, in keeping with the subject, the next article I read was Joel Stein's Man vs. Machine in Time Magazine.  You gotta read it.  I just can't do it justice, but it talks about the brain,  avatars, and us being robots.  It's a great article and hilarious as usual, and very fitting to my train of thought at the moment.

All the while, I am trying to tie all this together and this movie comes on Netflix.  An actor I had seen before somewhere, but didn't recognize him until I looked him up on IMDB,  Rupert Friend (previously seen on Homeland) in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.  What a fantastically sweet movie, I just loved it, though I got sidetracked from my blog post here.  You should watch it and see what you think for yourself.  There is this reoccurring theme in my life about re-incarnation and past lives that has just been really bothering me.  This movie portrayed the possibility so wonderfully, to me anyway, and made me really think about relationships and life and just why some people we meet connect with us in such a way that our lives are changed forever.