After discovering that we had very little in the cupboards to make a meal out of this evening, I jumped on my bike and cycled into town in search of food and perhaps a DVD or three from the Blockbusters bargain bin.
After returning with pizza, garlic bread, wine, chocolate, and a number of DVDs, we sat down to watch “Shadows in the Sun” - a film I had never heard of with Harvey Kietel playing a famous author living as a recluse in Italy; too scared to write after having written “the great American novel” 20 years previously.
While watching the movie I happened upon one of those “sweet spots” of melancholy fueled by just the right amount of wine, just the right amount of stress over the last month or two, and just the right sentiments in the movie to make me question who I am, where I am going, and what I am doing with my life.
It’s a weird feeling - when you hit one of these moments - because as much as your rational mind says “you have a perfectly good life here, with people who love you, and respect you”, your irrational mind (that has been sucked in temporarily by said movie/escapism) tells you that opportunities exist for you to “choose life”, to “choose adventure”, to live a life slightly less predictable and less formulaic than the one you currently live.
As much as you might start thinking about the “chances” (for want of a better phrase) that exist for you to live the escapist life style, you also know that the life that exists through a sliding door in a movie causes wreckage behind it that Hollywood never touches upon.
For every chance encounter that changes the path of people’s lives, there are other lives that are damaged. Careers that are wasted. Colleagues who are caused immense hardship, and of course hearts that are broken. That’s why hollywood remains on the “silver screen”, and why we cry when we watch movies. At least a little of one of the tears carries “what might have been” in our own lives.
As we travel through this life we make decisions, and we live with them. We meet people, and through meeting them both our own life and that of those around us are changed.
Perhaps the question is if we should choose a path before it arrives in front of us, or choose when we find ourselves at a crossroads. I would tend to subscribe to the latter. Of course the corolary is if we should ever try to change paths after making that decision… in the land of the movie screen people do it, and carry us in their heart as they do so - but that’s just it - it’s happening in the movies; skillfully directed to evoke an emotional response.
Deep thoughts for a Sunday night.