Moviemakers are always trying to lure us to the movie theater, and one of the best ways to do that is with pirates. Who doesn’t love a pirate? In any movie with a buccaneer, obviously the parts with the scurvy, one-eyed brigand are the best. For instance, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story features a pirate. The guy was awesome, am I right? While Captain Jack Sparrow was openly a pirate, some of our most beloved characters seem like pirates at heart, like Chewbacca and Han Solo.
A fun way to watch movies is to look for the person who would best represents the spirit of a pirate. Don’t confuse this with pirates’ ghosts, which are a big thing in some circles. In recent days, a New Zealand woman even legally married a 300-year-old pirate spirit, as was reported in a publication in January 2018. That’s not the challenge. The best way to know what to look for, I imagine, is to look at some of the qualities in pirates, such as Jack Sparrow, star of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Try to find one or more of those qualities in every movie you watch. That way, every movie will be a pirate movie!
Live Fearlessly
The heart of a pirate is to reject social norms, including grossly unfair class systems. It was widely known from about 1718 through 1722 that pirates plundered more than 2,400 ships on trade routes on the Atlantic Ocean. This caused a global crisis. But starting in 1724, pirates began to be portrayed in a book of pirate history in ways that captured imaginations everywhere. That is believed to be the beginning of the romanticizing of pirates.
We are secretly inspired by these swashbucklers. Meanwhile, most of us are held back by fears, such as fear of failure or fear of rejection. Sparrow once advised someone to look at each moment as opportune. Go for it! Live life to its fullest. Instead of waiting for your dreams to happen, take steps every day to make them come true. If possible, do it with a parrot on your shoulder.
Know What’s Valuable
Even though Jack Sparrow is lawless, doing such things as hijacking wealth, he actually knows what the true treasures of life are. In one of the pirate movies, he points out that not all treasure is silver and gold. Now, that’s some good insight. We’ve all known about people who had all the wealth or fame in the world and, yet, were deeply unhappy. A rich life is filled with things that matter most when a person is on their death bed, looking back. In that situation, no workaholic ever regretted that he didn’t work more.
Next time you watch a movie that doesn’t already star a pirate, get aboard your pretend pirate ship, press the spyglass against your good eye, and search for the movie’s endearing pirate adventurer. Aaaargh, if it doesn’t make your movie more fun, you can blow me down. Just don’t send me to the gangplank. I have a fear of crocodiles.
