All The Times Serenity Proved It Was Full of Life Lessons

If there’s a single movie I regularly hope is rediscovered and enjoyed for just how great it is, it’s Serenity. Joss Whedon’s 2005 big-screen continuation of the stories begun in his short-lived but critically-acclaimed series “Firefly,” it has all the hallmarks fans enjoyed from the writer/director: Snappy dialogue, deep and interesting characters and a premise that was wholly unique.

It’s a movie I quote often, despite knowing few of the people I talk to have seen it, because it’s filled with more lines containing valuable life lessons than just about anything else out there. Here are just a few that hopefully make you go check it out and see what you might have missed.

Wash: I am a leaf on the wind – watch how I soar.

Perfect For: Those moments when you’re convinced something is a good idea even if your friends don’t share that opinion.

 

Kaylee: To Hell with this. I’m gonna live!

Perfect For: Embracing FOMO and getting outside your comfort zone.

Mal: You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home.

 

The Operative: If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to.

Perfect For: When your editor hasn’t gotten back to you with feedback to the pitch you sent him two weeks ago so you start Liking his Tweets to remind him you’re a person who’d like to eat.

Jayne: Let’s be bad guys.

Perfect For: Literally any occasion involving interactions with other human beings.

 

Mal: I aim to misbehave

Perfect For: When you’re three beers in and opening Twitter is a bad idea but you do it anyway.

Mr. Universe: Can’t stop the signal, Mal.

Perfect For: When the stoplight turns green and you finally move out of the spot where you were getting nothing but static, which happens all the gorram time.

Zoë: Finally, we can retire and give up this life of crime.

Perfect For: Pay day.

 

Mal: It’s what I do, darlin’…It’s what I do. 

Perfect For: When you’re trying to explain your job to your parents. 

Wash: This landing is gonna get pretty interesting.

Perfect For: When you are trying to explain to someone how underrated and under-used as an actor Alan Tudyk is.

 

Book (via Jayne): “If you can’t do something smart, do something right.”

Perfect For: When all your cares are all used up.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.