Yesterday morning, I awoke to find my internet was broken and instead of freaking out—although I did cuss out my modem and router a few times—I instead decided to re-watch Princess Mononoke. It was like having this discussion, screaming over a great canyon, to a much-younger version of myself.

YOUNGER ROHIN: “Hey did you figure out all that junk that I don’t know how to figure out yet? What does it all look like there? Are you happy? Are people wonderful?”

OLDER ROHIN: “I’m still trying to! It kind of looks like last ten minutes of Princess Mononoke, here in the future. For the most part, but also still working on that last part, too! Most people are scary, but some are cool.”

That version that was still in high school or college and thought there was good in just about everybody. That version of me had no idea just how cruel people could be to one another.

In Princess Mononoke, there is all this destruction. No one is the de facto good guy or bad guy. Everyone has a motivation for doing what they do. Still. Greedy people are killing each other and nature in order to make a lot of money. It’s apt for the times we live in. And by the film’s end, it’s pretty bleak. People, animals, trees—everything’s dying. Even the forest god is freaking killed off. But then there’s regrowth. Lots of it. And quickly. The film ends on the scene of one of these cute little dudes—kodama—walking out. Regrowth.

Living in New York and watching how shoddily people treat one another on their way to their destination has steeled me to the idea of destruction. Things are falling down all the time in this city. But there is always regrowth. The point is that maybe if that regrowth stops happening in New York after a while—because I think most civilizations can only withstand so much hammering before they start to crumble—it’s going to happen at an astronomical rate elsewhere.

I have no idea what I’m trying to say here, but Princess Mononoke was a rad film.