Back to my pet topic...

There was a scene at the end of la la land when Emma Stone fantasized about an alternative life where things worked out perfectly with Ryan Gosling. i was dubious whether that scene was about a longing for lost love at all, in fact--wasn't it a bit mean that she did not even think for one second about his failed attempt at cooking a roast with her storming out of the flat etc and try in her mind at least to make that part perfect too? so end of the day, it was only a fantasy about her need for being perfectly treated. I guess she ended up becoming a famous star so she was allowed to be a bit more narcissistic than the average population... Gosh I am harsh... XD

Despite all that, it was a touching scene that viscerally moved many, including myself. Speaking from my shrinkage I can only say our infantile fantasies of being perfectly loved have its universality and permanence, and as adults we don't just grow out of them. if we don't accept and give them expression but think we are so much better than all these and try to annihilate them somehow, they probably get all the stronger and seep out in other more unpleasant ways than the appreciation of a somewhat regressed movie ending.

In relation to infantile fantasies, there has been some very heated debates in the chinese psychology circles lately about filial piety, but one common point of agreement that got mentioned again and again---
If you are in denial of the problems between you and your parents, and repressed your anger about their lack of love and failed attempt at care, your negative feelings don't dissipate into the ether but are bond to seep out in one way or another in the other parts of your relationship realm, and most commonly, your own children will end up take the direct blows and suffer...

i think i will come back my pet topic of all times - the parable of the unforgiving servant. over the years I've been wondering more and more that maybe our modern minds are no longer equipped to process this story properly. We tend to oscillate between the following two extremes that would completely fail the point：
1. given how much we value self-efficacy in this day and age, how many of us are really ready to accept the complete cancelling of our debts without generating a sense of rage at the helpless position we are made to be in？or maybe we think a truly merciful Almighty would have done this much more tactfully without hurting our feelings: how about planting a sack of gold outside the palace on the street corner so we can accidentally pick it up and be thankful of our good luck and our capacity at the end of the day to pay it all back？or surely the big boss can hire us into some palace position and pay us extremely well so we could pay back that massive debt with ease. Now that would be really merciful, and more often than not, a lot of us are indeed deluded that whatever privileged heavenly work we did or continued to do, surely will be enough to earn us back to grace.

2. we are in complete denial of our debts, pretend we are innocent as a dove, and are more or less imbeciles when it comes to responsibilities and deny our own roles in any of these, as clearly, if we never meant them, none of these entail any grave consequences. Going one step further, when our feelings about the important figures in our lives get too complex and ambivalent, we would be quick to be in denial of their debts too. Surely they are innocent as doves, and imbeciles too. and grave consequences of their actions just simply don't exist. This actually mimicks forgiveness, and we often end up calling it forgiveness, as this is probably the best we could do with human efforts.

I think for the modern mind, it is extremely difficult to ever take the position of--
I don't deny I was responsible and I have accumulated such debts, but I also accepts the helpless position and acknowledge that I do not have the self-efficacy to ever pay it back.
And that goes to any of my fellow servants on the street.
But having said that, that unforgiving servant, from that many thousand years ago, ran into as much problem with this as we do, hence the somewhat explosive unexplainable behaviour that manifested.

Now because it is all so difficult, we compulsively fake it. We think we can make the call to deny another person's debts to have existed in the first place, or, we jump into declarations of forgiveness all too quickly. We pretend our mind has ultimate control over our feelings and fool ourselves into thinking that if we tell ourselves and others long and hard enough that we have forgiven from a logical and reasoned perspective, we have indeed forgiven from the depth of our hearts, while more likely, we just repressed it, and then sooner or later, someone else suffers. And then, more denial, and more faking it till we make it, and also the quickness to jump and condemn anyone who hasn't used denial as a defence mechanism like we did.

But we are never going to make it---
...and really, at the end of the day, aren't all these also claiming to be able to pay back debts when you couldn't, and aren't all these throat grabbing of your fellow servants too?