Must Love Dogs and I AM Sam

When you misplace your energy and enthusiasm for something you once did well and very successfully, it may be time to reevaluate your reasons for doing it.

It may be a sign to take your life in a new direction. Step back. Breathe. Be objective and refresh yourself. Your time is precious and unrecoverable, and your commitments are important. What's worth committing to, breathing for, giving your heart and the essential moment?

It could be that you've lost touch with the fundamental principles that made you successful in the first place. You may have become less attentive, expecting better results without the effort and awareness and discipline you initially practiced. Innate ability is not enough. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird practiced like journeyman. They were geniuses in their game, but worked constantly to perfect their craft in all the small details, like building a fine boat from native woods. Excellence is a way of life. You can't just show up and slide by and expect to do as well as you once did with an all-out effort.

If you want to continue in your chosen passion, take a break, refresh yourself, and plunge in with renewed energy and commitment. And don't expect immediate results. The universe may test you with some bad breaks. Are you here for the long haul? Or is this another of your flirtations and half-hearted commitments? Immediate results are for sissies and fools. Beginner's luck is a stumble forward. Real success is a journey of careful preparation and practice. The bamboo grows slowly, hardly at all at first, and after several years of patiently doing the right things in the right order, it rockets forward, shooting to the sky feet at a time, seemingly over night. The real secret is hidden in the deep roots of patient commitment. Faith is not the first moment of bowing your knees, it is the actions you perform when you get up. It is returning to the same heart-felt understanding day after day, and acting on it when the rewards are not evident.

You must know, "I am here because I want to be. I do this because this is where I belong." If you no longer feel that in your heart, find what is in your heart. Follow that, and never let it go.

Must Love Dogs was a movie about the search for love, told with a wry detachment. It was a difficult movie to love, because it didn't earn its hopeful and inevitable ending. The actors didn't convince us. Despite doing fine work elsewhere John Cusack and Diane Lane and Christopher Plummer seemed to be going through the motions here, and the script didn't give them a chance to offer a real glimpse into the soul of how we connect to someone and how difficult it is, and the laughs were predictable and forced. The couple had dinner and fell into bed, but we never saw why. One moment they were having an awkward dinner conversation and the next moment they were tearing off one another's clothes. Urgency and desire are marvelous, but they have to come from somewhere. We never saw the connection develop. They didn't show us the magic. It made it hard to believe there was any.

As others have commented, John Cusack has fell into the trap of playing the same character over and over, a lovelorn hangdog with a quick wit, and he does it with less effort and less charm as time goes by. His boyish insouciance has worn out. He peaked holding a boombox over his arms twenty years ago, and now all he can do is fall into a hot tub time machine, acting ridiculous. I hope he too returns to the soul of what he is doing, and finds the courage to push himself further.

What a contrast to Sean Penn, who emerged about the same time, and never stops reinventing his characters in every gesture, who becomes the heart and soul of Harvey Milk and Huey Long and a grown man with the mind of a seven year old and a daughter he loves with every fiber of his tortured brain and perfect heart. Sam wasn't bright enough to count change, but he knew enough to love fiercely and change lives. There was nothing wry and ironic about him. He just had soul and courage, and those are far more important.