4 Cents on Defining Sanity?

I, too, tend to watch the same films over and over again and have often wondered why something with which I’m intimately familiar holds more interest for me than something new and potentially wonderful.  Wouldn't new and exciting always trump knows-every-line-by-heart?

For me, no.  Familiarity is comforting and easy, of course: you can tune in or tune off at any point without missing anything because you already know what's going on and you don’t have it give it your undivided attention. 

But it's more than just that.   There's also something exciting about experiencing a beloved movie - even though I know what’s going to happen - that usually trumps the wonder for a movie I've never seen before.  Familiar can hold more excitement than the unknown.

    

This is why I think my relationship with movies (and other things I enjoy, like books and music, too) are just like my relationships with people.  We tend to declare the new and novel to be better than the known and familiar, and put a premium on things like originality.  New can lead to good, certainly, but I tend to opt for something that I already love, just as I tend to seek out the people who already make me happy.  If new movies are wonderful, they’re going to become cherished familiarities soon, just like new people who are wonderful.

New can be exciting, but already beloved is something ... more.

The dictionary defines sanity as soundness of health or mind.  Things that make us happy we want to continue to experience over and over again.  That sounds pretty sane to me.