The best movies resonate.
They give voice to feelings you never knew you had, to longings you were only just beginning to sense. You walk out of a movie that affects you like that, or you watch one at home, and there is this holy, tingling feeling, like the deepest part of you has been touched. You feel more alive and more awake, and your heart and mind are open to possibilities and new beginnings, to the stubborn reclaiming of the lost hopeful believing awakened alive person you have always longed to be. Movies are a wondrous magic, transporting you to another time and place, and then returning you to your own, awakened as if from a perfect and illuminating dream. I love a good movie and the way it can touch the heart and the soul.
Marie and I saw two today: "The World's Fastest Indian" and "Nights in Rodanthe." No, they weren't perfect movies, and I can't tell you how many stars they had or how many billion dollars of box office they did, I can only tell you I was mesmerized and transformed by them, by the courage of the performances and the powerful life-changing emotions they captured.
In "The World's Fastest Indian" Anthony Hopkins plays a person I once longed to be. His deft portrait of Bert Munro, a 68-year-old New Zealand man who travels to America on a rusting freighter to set a world land speed record for motorcycles, is captivating and charming for many reasons. One is Hopkins' consummate skill as an actor. Another is the character himself. Munro lives with uncompromising vitality and courage. He has a dream, an energy, an authenticity of spirit that engages other people and endears him to every one he meets. He forms community wherever he goes, a magic of acceptance and resolve and heart. It's wonderful to watch this movie unfold, to watch how hopeful life can be, how powerful the simple fundamentals of genuineness and purpose can change everything and everyone it touches. Once I wanted to be a Bert Munro. Before I buried my life under a mountain of crap and fear and obligation and timidity. Before I started hiding my heart and energy away.
Munro tells the young boy who lives next door, "If you haven't got a dream, you might as well be a vegetable." "What kind of vegetable?" the boy asks. "Oh, I don't know, any vegetable. A cabbage."
It takes courage to keep the dreaming, aspiring part of you alive. It's always easier to be numb and distracted. It's easier to plod along and accept mediocrity or sullen inattentive duty. And it isn't that we have run off and join the circus, or try out for the Giants. That isn't the point. The point is preserving your commitment to hope. The point is connecting, hearing, and knowing other people. Bert Munro's handshake meant something. His friendship was a gift given with a sacred understanding of what friendship can mean. People trusted him and wanted to help him, because in him they saw a person who was truly alive, a person who valued them in an authentic way. There was a spirit and energy alive in him that exists in us all, but too often gets lost.
We ought to have two dreams: one, to create or achieve something that expresses our destiny or highest hope; and two, to touch and encourage others along the way. We ought to be alive before we are dead. We ought to take some risks of spirit. We ought to love rather than merely exist.
When my wife is most angry with me she often says, "You don't even know me. Do you think you know me at all?" I'm sad to think her lover may have known her better in a few brief months than I do after five years of marriage. We all have an innate capacity to understand and appreciate other people. Some men have a rare gift for understanding women. For connecting. For saying the right things. For creating an atmosphere of security and trust. For soothing the hurts and satisfying the hungers. For captivating the imagination and freeing the soul. They can do all this for the woman they love and change her heart forever. I'm not sure I'm one of those men. Maybe I'm too stubborn or too selfish. Maybe I try too hard in some areas and not enough in others. I'm clumsy sometimes. And I'm not gifted in giving, and certainly not endowed with the energy or the prowess to sweep a woman away.
I know my heart is open. My defense is always, "That's your fault." Meaning, you haven't allowed yourself to be known. You've hidden a part of yourself from me, a secret part you have stored away in bitterness or regret or disappointment or stunted expectations. You're not dreaming with me. You're not available to me, not completely. On some level you've decided I'm not worthy or capable of that kind of trust.
Like all defenses mine is not entirely fair. Perhaps not remotely fair. The second movie, "Nights in Rodanthe" is a story of life-changing, empowering, memorable love. At the end of the movie the grief-stricken mother tells her daughter, "Hold out for that kind of love, because that's what you deserve." It's what we all deserve. We all deserve a love that is free from cruelty, fear or craziness. A love that is safe and sacred. A love that honors, encourages, and sets us free.
My daughter found that kind of love. I am so happy to see her so happy, but a terrible trial is ahead of her. Tom leaves for Afghanistan in just a few weeks. I agonize over the uncertainty and the lingering threat of ultimate tragedy in their lives and the lives of their precious children. She'll have their second baby three months after Tom deploys. He'll be half a world away, in dust and mayhem, surrounded by madmen who want to kill him for a holy reward.
Here at home, we cling to hope. We have our good days and bad, our moments of misery and brokenness and regret, our tender mercies. I want to be a good husband and an alive, aspiring person. I know those were just movies. But real life ought to have the essential urgency and purpose of a good movie. It ought to be as vivid and real. We should never give up hoping. We should never settle for less. All of our experiences and discoveries should resonate and hold our attention. We should be as amazed by own lives as we are by Anthony Hopkins' facile gift for bringing life before our eyes.
It would be helpful to have someone to talk to who understands these things. I wish I had a friend. I don't mean that in a pitying way. I haven't taken the time or made the choices that inspire that kind of friendship. I realize that is a deep hole in my life. I realize I need to live more thoughtfully and with more intention.
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