The other night, I watched a movie with a friend via Zoom. We’ve done this a couple of times before (his pick: Dallas Buyers Club, mine: Shop Around the Corner), but not in many months. We caught up for a bit, swapping pale pleasantries about our respective lives in New Jersey and Minnesota, until what tends to happen between two people who have history--unavoidable, emotional lockstep, time and physical distance be damned. Our sharing became more saturated with the color of exposed truths, including my insecurity du jour--the overwhelming feeling I’m not living the life I'm meant to be living.
He asked me what we were going to watch. I resisted the instinct to suggest one of my defaults--A River Runs Through It, The Revenant, Walk the Line--and instead volleyed. “What are you in the mood for?” I asked. He asked me if I had ever seen Soul. I hadn’t, and I was hesitant. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good Pixar flick. There is more to them than tales of toys and robots and animals and the trouble in which they often find themselves (WALL-E being the best representation, in my opinion). I just didn’t think this pick bespoke the vibe of our conversation, a vibe I admit I was thirsty to maintain. But the sun was setting, and I was too tired from a day of hands-and-knees housework to think of an alternative. I closed my windows for the evening, and we cued up the movie, pressing play at the agreed-upon 3-2-PLAY moment to ensure viewing synchronicity. As the opening credits rolled, I silently scolded myself for eating the box of Sno-Caps I bought specifically for our movie night for lunch.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I am well aware of Pixar movies being disarmingly simultaneously adult and guileless. Their ability to distill complex philosophical concepts down to one simple profundity comprehensible to children is flooring, especially when I remember grasping at some of the same philosophical straws as an earnest undergraduate philosophy major. But this wasn’t a movie--it was a film--and I couldn’t have picked one that better accompanied the innocent-turned-heady tone of our conversation.
At the heart of Soul is a message to which I’ve always prescribed but often neglect to remember: It’s not what you do with your life that gives it meaning, but how you show up to it and for it. I vehemently reject the idea that “you are what you do.” At the end of my life, it’s not going to matter how many words I've written, or if a publisher ever saw them fit to print, or how many people read them or even how many people were moved by them. What’s going to matter is how I approached my life and how I chose to respond to it when it gave me more than I deserved or when it kicked me in the teeth. I say this not to devalue the lifework of single parents, teachers, doctors, military servicemembers and other professions I consider heroic. I say this to convey the idea that a person’s lifework isn’t necessarily their lifeblood.
Life doesn’t boil down to whether I achieve success or failure in my passion. Rather, it’s how I live up to its innumerous, yet ultimately limited, moments. And although I do remember saying: “writer” when asked what I wanted to be when I grow up (I also wanted to be a rock collector, dogsitter and big sister), I like to think that if I’d been asked a different, perhaps more important, question: “How do you want to be when you grow up?” I would have responded: “Present and kind.”
I don't know if you'll ever read this, but no matter: Thanks for the suggestion, Jersey. And for the reminder that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, making the most of this, the too-short time before the Great Beyond. And if that means I eat the box of Sno-Caps before the movie, then so what--I enjoyed the shit outta them while they lasted.
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