I often find it hard to pick my favourite film or even my top ten favourite films. I have spent the past few years trying to expose myself to the best that the media industry has to offer. I will say that despite all of what I have watched no film has had such a large impact on me, and how I view the world, as Trainspotting. Ironically enough I have never read the original book, despite my long-term intentions to do so.

I think the film appealed to me during my rebellious years. This was not out of some underlying desperation to try heroin, but because of Renton’s speech at the start - Choose life, knowing full well you will live work and die all in the same breath as you’re future spawn. This concept that the path of go to uni, get a job, and die was evil appealed to me so much that when I was in university I had a poster of the full quote on my wall - The irony is not lost on me now, but I can assure you that that younger version of me would have picked up on it.

I have a common quote that I use

“Most people below the age of 18 are morons”

It’s based on something someone told me when I was fifteen and having girl trouble. When I was that age I was a die-hard emo. I used to hang out with all the other local emos in the local shopping centre. I had a thing for a girl at the time, and we were having an argument over something or other (to tell you the truth I don’t even remember the girl’s name let alone whatever argument we were having that week). I was talking to one of the 18-year-old in the group, and I remember at one point I called her an idiot and he said “I’m going to tell you something that you are not going to truly understand until you are older, everyone your age is an idiot”. To this day I don’t quite know if it was him just brushing me off, or if he had drawn the following conclusions that I am about to explain.

Between the ages of 14-18, you begin to actually get your first exposure to the real world. The vast majority of people assume they have it figured out straight away. I think in a way it’s because when you are growing up when you are wrong there are some pretty immediate consequences for it. In real life the consequences for being wrong rarely show up straight away, this means you don’t have that immediate feedback. Some people grow out of this feeling of thinking “I know everything”, and some people don’t. I don’t think I ever truly began to grow up until I came to accept that I really knew jack **** about how the real world works.

However, in this state of adolescence where you haven’t quite begun to understand what it is to fend for yourselves, you begin to see the world as inherently unfair. “Why should I have to work for a living? It’s not fair” - Unfortunately life isn’t fair, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Another one of my common phrases is “life doesn’t owe you ****”. I think this is one of those core lessons that people only truly understand when they begin to grow up. The transition from relying on others to self-reliance is a pretty crappy one, but a necessary one. The irony is not lost on me as I write this, I live with my parents still, I am not self-reliant, but I have an understanding that that is where I ultimately want to be.

I think a lot of people don’t understand this - Life not owing you **** on the surface is a pretty dire concept to come to grips with because it means that you are not special. Privileged or disadvantageous, when we die we end up in the same place. It is tempting to blame the universe for your current situation, but that blame doesn’t change it; trust me, I tried that for twenty years. No one is coming to save you, and it is selfish to assume they should

Trainspotting appealed to me at a young age because it showed a romantic view of what life is when you unsubscribe from the traditional path laid out before you. Trainspotting appeals to me now for a whole different reason. It shows a group of people who unsubscribed from society and communicate in all ways other than words that they want back in. It shows that when someone escapes from the black hole of addiction and anti-social behaviour, their friends will drag them back into it. It shows that completely rejecting the world we live in is a romantic view on the surface, but is laden with monsters.

A younger version of me would say that I have sold out by taking this view. I would consider a younger version of me a loser who just needs to grow up. Take from what you will