Living Once

Living Once

Apparently, where I have been saying “Carpe Diem” for many years, even long before the movie The Dead Poets Society, when Robin Williams whispers it to his prep school students, telling them to “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” as written by poet Robert Herrick in 1909, who took the phrase from The Book of Wisdom from the Bible, others have been saying YOLO (You Only Live Once) to imply the same thing. While they both mean the same thing, I still prefer Carpe Diem because it conveys a practical yet positive action of seizing the day. How could seizing the day ever be anything but a good thing. What has made me think about all this is that I have whiled away my sunny afternoon, while Pete and Nancy are at the beach and Kim is in the bedroom, still suffering from what is now a three-day bout of stomach distress (presumably some combination of her gastric bypass and the heat we are suffering, but to be checked out with the doctor this week), by rewatching The Bridges of Madison County.

The film is extraordinarily impactful because it seems to touch so many human emotional nerves all at once. It’s simultaneously about forbidden fruit, loyalty and fidelity, sacrifice, dignity, love in a multilateral sense, acceptance, self-awareness, beauty and fulfillment. If you want to explore and awaken any of these feelings, this is a great movie to watch to get your juices flowing. As a writer and storyteller, I am struck by what inspired Robert James Waller, the author of the novel upon which it is based, to write such a powerful book. I know that Clint Eastwood is well able to turn such a story into a great movie, as is his habit, but Waller is not exactly a household name storyteller. The man grew up and was schooled in Iowa, the setting for Madison County. Therefore, he obviously understood the bedrock of the local culture that gives rise to the conflict that creates the tension of the story. Those are both the good and the bad qualities of small-own Iowa farm life. While Waller was a professor of business and economics, he clearly had a romantic soul that could either invent or at least portray an amazing human interaction that captures the full range of humanity over four days and all that ensues from it.

I have spent a good deal of time over the years wondering whether to credit greatness in movies to the actors, the director, the producers or the writers. I know that the easy answer is to say all of the above, but some movies are great mostly due to one element and that alone. All the other things are necessary, but not sufficient to make for greatness. Look at Bonfire of the Vanities, the great book by Thomas Wolfe that was well cast (Willis, Hanks, Griffith) and had a great director (DePalma) and yet failed to ring any bells and actually fell very flat with a Metascore of a mere 27. In the case of Bridges, in my opinion, it is all about the story more than Eastwood or Streep. The story is exceedingly beautiful and what makes it so is its poignancy. I am inclined to think that this story is less about a business school dean (Waller) coming up with some great fiction out of thin air and more likely a set of true events or at least conjured events leading from some chance encounter that left the author struck by the thunderbolt of love that comes through so clearly in the movie. There is nothing unusual about a story of someone who falls in love at an inconvenient time in their lives, but the pain of choosing and the subordination of longing is unusual.

I also strongly relate to the mechanism of learning about the angst (at least Streep’s angst) through the discovery of her children while reading their mother’s journals. My own mother had a similar issue of unfulfilled love and the angst and strength of setting her needs well behind those of others. These are stories of great nobility and the love that goes unpursued at the expense of calming the waters of the lives of others that you love. Streep says that her husband, who she declares is a good man that never hurt anyone, would never be able to get his arms around her leaving to be with Eastwood. She also says that her adolescent children would likely be impaired in their own development of meaningful relationships in life as they struggle to understand their mother’s unhappiness with her life in Iowa and her need to leave them in order to be happy. This honest revelation to her children, albeit posthumously, is extremely powerful as a storytelling mechanism. I have often thought of that moment in my life when I asked my mother why she moved to Venezuela in 1946 and what motivated her to make such a dramatic change of life. Her answer to me was to say, “I guess you’re old enough now for me to tell you…” I have said that that line might be the best attention-getter any parent can give a child. I know I sat up and took notice of what was about to come from her. SHe proceeded to tell me that she had taken the opportunity of a meaningful job in Venezuela to get away from a relationship that would have upended the life of her lover, who was a married man. The details of all of that are sad, but noble story of moving on with life despite not grabbing what you really want. Just as Streep has her hand on the door handle at one fateful last gasp moment in the rain (magnificent storytelling drama), she let go and let the moment and the impulse pass for the better of all involved except perhaps herself. Her life was instantly made a life of service to others rather than a self-indulgent one. That is true nobility.

I am very lucky I think because I too have had those moments and I believe I chose well and properly for all in the long run. There is always a cost of choices in life and the roads not taken cannot help but impact and perhaps even momentarily hurt others and yourself, but if it all works out in the long run, then perhaps the path chosen is righteous nonetheless. Since we are talking about primary relationships in this context of you only living once (YOLO), I guess I would have to say that I had only three dramatic moments. The first was when I decided that it was best to end my first marriage. The drama was that my first wife was and remains an incredibly good and worthy person. My decision was that she and I would both be happier on different paths and that the kids would therefore be better with that as well in the long run. That was a good decision. The second was my decision to not pursue another relationship in between marriages that would have been disastrous certainly for me and, I suspect, for her since she had a serious problem with alcohol that only she could address. I don’t count the conclusion of my second marriage in this list because that decision was taken by her and I suspect it was the best one for her, so I had to just deal with it. And the third was the instantaneous decision I made when I met Kim for the first time. I literally knew within the first hour of our meeting that I had met my soulmate for life. The fact that our love has done nothing but grow since that moment is testament to that.

I am sort of cheating on that third one since there was less a decision process than an instinctive reaction and there was certainly no angst or pain associated with the choice of that path (at least not that I know of). All of my children and friends (including both of my ex-wives…seriously) have been thrilled with my most recent and final choice of paths. I may only live once, but I have lived enough to know when I’ve got it good. I am glad that I got to take a path that has made me happy every day and, most importantly, happily looking forward to the next day.