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If you ever ask me to boost your morale when you are feeling low. I will just recommend you, watch a movie called “Forrest Gump”.

As this single movie can change your entire perspective about living life. This movie takes a character that is an odd outsider and makes us love him. Tom Hanks, the actor who plays adult Forrest Gump in the movie, is one of the main reasons that this movie touched excellence. He is a believable and wonderful actor, who can communicate so much in his voice and body language.

Essentially, Forrest is a character who represents physical, relational and emotional transformation. His full name was Forrest Alexander Gump but his father was absent during his life, and thus his mother named Forrest after their ancestor Nathan Bedford Forrest. She intended his name to be a reminder that "sometimes we all do things that, well, just don't make no sense". On the bus ride on Forrest's first day of school, he met Jennifer Curran and instantly fell for her. One day, a group of bullies was throwing rocks at Forrest then Jenny advised him, "Run Forrest Run!", which he did, only to provoke the bullies to track down him on their bikes. As Forrest ‘attempted’ to run, his leg braces broke apart. Once he was free of them, Forrest was able to run incredibly fast. Throughout his life, he maintains a sincere love for Jenny, who eventually becomes his wife. It seems so simple, but he has to pledge for himself that he “knows what love is even though he’s not a smart man.” He evolves emotionally as he learns to relate to several people in his life. He goes from a discouraged crippled boy with braces on his legs, to becoming a timely runner.

He learns many lessons from his momma, his girlfriend and his best friend too. On the bus going to a boot camp, Forrest meets Benjamin Buford Blue, a young black man from Alabama, who went by the nickname "Bubba". Bubba told Forrest about his family history of cooking “shrimp” and how he had planned to buy his own shrimping boat after getting out of the army. Bubba explains to Forrest that he loves all kinds of shrimp, and makes a long list of different types, with Forrest being the only one to really listen to him.

Later, Forrest's loneliness in life leads him to make a run for no particular reason. At first, he decides to run to the end of the road, then across town, then across the county, then all the way to the Mississippi border. Eventually, he crisscrossed the country several times over a span of three years. Forrest's run brings media coverage, and eventually, dozens of followers initiating. Also, in America, at the time the sport of running was becoming increasingly popular as well as a national search for personal meaning. Forrest ran and people likewise searching for the meaning of life followed him in his journey.

He also learns from his relationship with his mother and how he would like to treat his own son by telling him ‘he loves him’ before the first day of school instead of “don’t let anybody tell you you’re different.”

But the main transformation I want to focus on is that Forrest is constantly told what to do, how to act and what to think. And he shifts his professions from a soldier to a runner, to a ping-pong player and then a successful businessman too.

The movie describes Forrest Gump as someone who is like us. Forrest wants the same things that we want and struggles with some of the same things that we struggle with. It teaches us that its okay to shift your goals in life. The movie quote, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get," captures the innocent wisdom of Forrest Gump, which introduces us with a concept of ‘changing our decisions’ at any point in our lives because we never know what life will throw at us. The movie also gives us a glance of a unique world, the efforts of Forrest that we can’t relate, to widen our perspective into this other human’s life and experience. By showing us that Forrest is like us, we gain empathy. Many other examples of empathy run wild throughout the movie. With characters who are single parents, abuse victims, war survivors and more, you are sure to find a character who teaches you something about the human condition and opens up your heart.

After losing some of his loved ones and a few successful careers as a shrimp tycoon, ping pong player and a cross-country runner, Forrest's journey comes to a head, and after he discovers he has a son who he has just put on the school bus, the beginning of another phase of a journey which will amount to a life lived. As the awesome Momma notes, society sanctions what “normal” is. It doesn’t really have a valid definition. Don’t ever feel like you have to be “normal.” Let your freak flag fly.

Some people always expect for ‘Happy Endings’ in ‘reel’ but for the purpose of what makes a good movie and not merely a ‘happy audience member’, happy endings aren’t always the “real” endings. Let’s be genuine, life sucks sometimes. Whose life is smooth and without pain and struggles? The experiences of love and loss that Forrest faces in this movie are some of the strongest forces of connection that we maintain.

Forrest and other characters find renewed hope in the end because even in the darkest of times, we can always find hope that gets us through.