 The perks of being a wallflower is a story about the infinite layers between a person's ego and a person's soul, and in that, the self-discovery and expression of the soul through the connection we have with each other. Much of this coming-of-age story is centered around being an outcast in a world of sameness, telling us of uniqueness, individuality, and that each of us have the potential to live our best lives if we can just get out of our own way. While the story is based in 1991, it relates very well with most demographics in the last 40 years, maybe minus all the mixtapes, as much of the message is universal to our human consciousness today. The story was both written and directed by Stephen Chibosky for both the novel and the screenplay, and while generally here we'll be focusing on the movie, for those interested, the book adds many dimensions to the story that we don't see in the film. With that, here's your spoiler alert, and here we go. The film opens and closes with the Infinity Tunnel, the place which, to the main characters, seems to be a place of pure experience, an experience of the infinite within. We see Sam and later Charlie experience this by standing up in the back of a truck, holding their arms out in joyous surrender to the expansive and seemingly never-ending tunnel. This is where we find Charlie's legendary line that became the tagline of the movie, We Are Infinite. What's especially amazing and curious about this is that it subtly explores the lines between danger and conscious expansion. In the surrender of the will of the soul, it opens for this expansive, iconic experience that few are familiar with, which deepens their connection to themselves, feelings of freedom, and each other. Now, both in the book and a core part of the movie is that the narrative is told through Charlie writing these letters to us, essentially providing a more intimate look at what's going on inside Charlie's mind and heart. Throughout the story, we peel back the layers of his nature and go deeper into resonance with his soul, but what's more so, we can see the various layers of his personality, both ego and soul, that are steering the ship of his life. And truly, one remarkable aspect of this story in particular is that every character feels like real people, which makes it easy for the film to connect well with anyone, as opposed to some of those other Hollywood high schools where everyone is 30, or constantly breaking into song. But perhaps one of the challenges of going back to high school through this movie is that in a lot of ways, it's really accurate, which brings up all kind of memories. For myself personally, there's a lot of this story that just feels like exactly what happened in high school. And I mean, take this girl for instance. Who hurt you? But yet, if the story gives us any indication, it's that each of us, with our multitude of layers, have this incredible bank of life experience. And all of us have been hurt in some ways, though rarely we show it openly. Throughout the film, we slowly bury deeper into the many layers of these characters and explore the abuse that was experienced in childhood, and how they were able to overcome it and grow as people. So even as we watch, for those with the heart to explore it, even the people who are not so nice, like the girl in Charlie's class, the teacher who calls his student nothing, or Brad and his friends, are all people who are suffering in their own ways, but just haven't yet faced it within themselves. Perhaps one of the most significant lessons of this movie here is that hurt people hurt people. So getting to know Charlie, we learn that he is a young, budding writer, making these journals and describing his life experiences. If we go into our ancient past, we find many legendary sages telling us that it is through our words that we create and steer our lives and reality. And what's more so, that writing our words gives them lasting power, which is why things like journaling and even vision boards can be so powerful, both in creating new things in life and developing wisdom and meaningful self-reflection. Charlie actively demonstrates this throughout the story by the words that he uses when he's journaling. Early on, he writes about how his old friends and people he used to know don't want to connect with him. And he says, well, I'm me, so who am I kidding? Putting himself down and reinforcing the belief in himself that he's not worth very much. Yet, he also writes that he wants to make new friends because he wants to turn things around. And this very intention puts him on the path to actually making some. Now, the first friend that Charlie makes is really his teacher, Paul Rudd. However, Charlie's own shame prevents him from acknowledging this at the start. But throughout the story, Mr. Rudd essentially becomes Charlie's guiding mentor, providing him with wisdom in the form of books and supporting him in being an intelligent writer. We are also introduced to Patrick. Patrick really represents the outspoken voice of those who are misrepresented in the world, and one who will stand up for those who are outcasts from society. When we first meet Patrick, he is drawing a beard on himself, pretending to be the shop class teacher. And the teacher comes in and calls him Patty Cakes. So Patrick says, look, my name is Patrick, so either call me Patrick or call me nothing. And the teacher calls him nothing. In the book, this plays out a little bit differently, but we can glean a lesson here nonetheless. Because of this exchange, basically all of the kids in school refer to Patrick as nothing throughout the entire story. However, by the end we see the transmutation of this energy, as he puts, nothing hates you on the top of his hat, owning and even changing the energy and demonstrating some wisdom and compassion all the same. Nothing hates you, there's only love, get it? Well, this probably went over most people's heads, which might be a pun because it was on the top of his hat. Speaking to friendships, the final of the main trio in the story is Sam. Now, the name Sam itself actually translates from Hebrew, meaning God has heard or listen, name of God. And she plays a significant role not just in her own story, but helping Charlie to open his heart and supporting him throughout his own self-discovery. There's a lesson here too for all of us in the question of who are we showing up for in our lives? The beautiful thing about Sam is that she really shows up for nearly everyone. There's a subtle allusion to this in that the first time we see her, she has bright stadium lights behind her depicting angelic radiance. Yet at the same time, Sam herself represents the loss of innocence, for she used to have a reputation of getting drunk with all the boys, and I'm sure you can imagine where that train ends. We can see this in many areas throughout the movie, such as the red and black that she often wears, which falls in stark contrast to the pink wall and twinkly lights of her bedroom, but deeper still with her story of being taken advantage of by her dad's boss at the age of 11, which twisted her into becoming the girl with the reputation. Yet the quality of her soul allowed her to grow as a person. She is not defined by these aspects of herself anymore, moving beyond her past into a higher reality and progressively does so even to the end, getting into Penn State and sharing that things do get better. The tunnel scene, which we explored earlier, is a scene of soaring, flying, trust and freedom, all of the things that help Charlie in embodying the same thing by the end too. Having made some friends, Charlie is initiated into the group by attending his first party, where he experiences his first plant medicine experience, eating a cannabis brownie and opening up to his new friends in a quirky way, where they essentially adopt him into the group. Welcome to the island of misfit toys, Sam says, after Patrick gives Charlie a toast. One of the primary activities of this group is going to and participating in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Now we spoke before about how the tunnel represents freedom, and this is another special place where freedom of expression reigns supreme and inhibitions go out the window. Honestly, these scenes just deserve a massive shout out, both to Steven Shiboski for weaving this into the narrative in a really meaningful way, and also the actors for having such courage to get on stage in front of all these cameras and an audience of a thousand people and perform the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mad respect. Now speaking of freedom and big changes, a little while later, Charlie also experiences LSD for the first and probably the last time. Cinematically, it's a really funny segue between taking the Eucharist at church and doing a tab, which shows a direct correlation to entering the depths of spirituality and all of the ways we can do this. But nobody ever taught Charlie that the best way to practice with psychedelics is in nature or with meditation, so he doesn't have the best time. At one point, he ends up shoveling snow in a circle on the driveway for a while, and wait a second, this house has six garage doors. What? This seems a little excessive, but okay. During this scene, Charlie says... And I'm certain that this was probably unintentional, but when you learn about Yggdrasil, the Norse edition of the Tree of Life system, we find that there is this dragon called Nidhogg. In historical Viking society, Nidhogg was a great and terrible dragon whose actions intended to pull the cosmos into chaos, and who also chewed the bodies of those who were guilty of terrible crimes. This is very curious to me because it seems to relate to the undercurrent of darkness that runs throughout the story, as both Sam, Charlie, and even Aunt Helen were abused when they were younger. Again, this connection is probably not intentional, but Charlie seeing the tree become a dragon could be indicative of uncovering the darkness at the bottom of his own inner psyche. See, this part of the story really does begin the inward spiral that leads him into uncovering the truth of his past, and the full transformation is represented by the LSD trip where at the end he creates a snow angel representing his purification and rebirth. Speaking to this undercurrent of trauma and how it shows up for us often in life is this idea that we accept the love we think we deserve, a key point made throughout, as we see so many characters accepting love that deep down they know is only holding them back from becoming more authentic versions of themselves. Whether it's Candace and ponytail Derek, Patrick and his secret lover Brad, Sam and Craig, and Mary Elizabeth and Charlie. The film really explores the idea that we often do things that we don't want to for the wrong reasons. Charlie dates Mary Elizabeth and hates it. He has absolutely nothing good to say about it at all, and yet he stays in it. Why? Because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings. Even though it's not a healthy relationship, Charlie can't see past his own ego or what he's creating by staying in the relationship. What's more so, even after the relationship ends, Charlie is still trying to make up with her because he feels bad. He feels guilty, and in this we gain a subtle reflection for ourselves in how we weave our own traps of suffering. We can see this expressed during one scene where he has this black dot on his third eye, the symbol of Ash Wednesday from his church, and Mary Elizabeth wipes it off. For much of the film, she does seem to carry this representation of the spiritual ego, by her tendency to boast about spiritual concepts but doesn't really behave much like the Buddhist she claims to be. The story asks us to reflect on our own relationships and our own lives in the same way. What are we doing, and why are we doing it? Are our actions in the highest alignment with our souls? However, we must also acknowledge that, as we go deeper, we see that Charlie's guilt of feeling responsible for his Aunt Helen's death also stems into not being able to tell Mary Elizabeth the truth about how he feels. From this, we may discover within ourselves that all of our actions and feelings are interwoven together, far deeper than we know. To the surprise of many people who first watch it, or read the book, towards the end, Charlie goes through what resembles a dark night of the soul, a common thing during the awakening process where we must face some aspect of our past. We must go through a trauma and the pain in order to emerge on the other side of it and find healing. Throughout the film, Charlie's pain wells up within him in a number of ways, such as the fight in the cafeteria. Later on, when he's taken to the hospital, he says something very interesting. He asks the doctor how to make it stop. How can he stop seeing everyone's pain, that everyone is in pain all the time? Yet, the one thing he can't see is his own pain. It reminds me of a Bible verse from Matthew 7. First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye. Charlie can't even see his own pain, but it's so strongly there that it manifests itself as if he's seeing everyone else's. It's as if his pain itself has anchored to him this frequency of pain and suffering, but unless he faces the darkness within, he won't be able to stop seeing it in others too. As he faces his past and comes to terms with it, he begins to let go and find healing, something we all must do on our journey of reconciling our own pasts. Here we find another moving lesson as Charlie lets go of his past. He also must let go of his friends, as they graduate and move on into new realities, yet not forgetting or losing their friendship, just adding some distance and still maintaining a strong relationship. One final aspect of the story we must explore is this very human moment where Sam and Charlie have a serious talk. Sam reveals something very deep and moving, something we can all learn from. She says that she doesn't just want to be someone's crush, but that she wants someone to love her for who she truly is. It is a powerful and very heartfelt moment, revealing the deepest part of her character, showing the soul from the ego and for both of these characters expressing what they really want most on a heart-centered level and a natural expression of the soul. As the story comes to a close, Charlie discovers that we may accept the love that we think we deserve, but it is our duty to show people that they deserve more. We all deserve to fly through the tunnel, to see the lights and everything that makes you wonder, with those who you love most in the world and realize that deep down, in all of our hearts, we are infinite.