The jealousy I felt in F1 movie

In the recent film F1, there is a moment near the end that stayed with me longer. The driver, played by Brad Pitt, stands on a balcony and speaks about why he keeps driving. I don’t remember his exact words. But I remember what he meant. He wasn’t talking about winning Not about success, fame, or money.

He was talking about a brief, rare moment almost wordless, when time stops. When everything goes silent. When the body moves without effort and the mind no longer interrupts. A moment when you know, without question, that you are fully alive. That's about the Flow.

I watched the film in a Dolby theater. The sound wrapped around my body. The engine’s vibration felt physical, almost intimate. And somewhere between the music and the motion, I felt something unexpected. Jealousy. Not the bitter kind but a quiet ache.

Jealous that he has a place, a practice, a discipline that allows him to enter that state. That he knows exactly where his flow lives.

Of course, we don’t need to be gifted Formula 1 drivers to experience such moments. But we do need something similar: a way of placing ourselves deliberately into conditions where flow can happen. From my perspective, his ability to enter that state rests on a few things.

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1 | detachment from the final goal

He isn’t chasing an outcome. The moment he releases the need to prove anything, the experience itself becomes enough.

2 | trust in your own skill

Not loud confidence, but quiet familiarity. His body remembers what to do. Flow arrives where effort has already been paid for in time.

3 | a willingness to choose challenge

Flow does not live in comfort. It waits at the edge where fear sharpens attention and risk dissolves distraction.

4 | knowledge gathered over years slowly

Nothing about that moment is accidental. It is supported by countless invisible hours.

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As an just an audience, I realized that watching F1 asks something similar of us. Perhaps the mixed reactions to the film come from how we watch it. If we focus only on the plot, predictable arcs, familiar heroes, the handsome man who ultimately succeeds, we might leave disappointed. But if we let go of expectations and allow ourselves to simply receive the sound, the rhythm, the scenery, the movement, something else opens.

For me, in that moment, the film stopped being a story and became an experience. Not his flow I experienced fully, but a small reflection of it. Maybe that was the point all along. It was the one example of how we put our intention before doing something, determine the how our experience turned out.

If you have any recommendations for movies similar to F1, please share them in the comments.

In the end, I hope we all find our own “doorway” to flow, just like him.

wholeheartedly,

Sae