Today's Kindness #336: June 9, 2023
📽️🍿Movie Night!🍿📽️
Pop some popcorn, grab a blanket and your favorite buddy, put away the cell phones and tablets, and then queue up a string of movies for a fun night of entertainment. National Movie Night on the second Friday in June encourages us to start (or restart) a tradition of movie nights with friends and family.
Movies have been bringing people together for over 100 years. The stars, the stories entertain us, connect us and help us create memories. As technology evolves, so does how we enjoy our movie nights. We've been enjoying movies on big and small screens, from the theater to reel-to-reel home movies, the VCR, DVD, and streaming. Drive-in movies invited us to enjoy films from the comfort of our cars. Today, our video library is as large as we want it to be thanks to streaming services. We can even enjoy movies in our own backyards projected onto screens under the stars.
Movies can provide several mental health benefits. A 2016 review by Brandeis University found that enjoying leisure activities such as watching movies could boost mood and reduce symptoms of depression. Giving your mind a break from work for something enjoyable could motivate you to be more productive when you get back to it and ward off feelings of burnout.
"My mama always said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
~ Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump