Something Other Than
There’s a scene in a movie with Vanessa Redgrave and Meryl Streep and their daughters, where Meryl Streep, playing a woman
somewhere in her sixties I’m guessing, prepares to walk up a flight of stairs.
As she takes the first step, she grabs onto the banister and her body falls back a little, then pushes forward to give her momentum for the upward movement. It’s a small thing, only a second, but a wonderfully real detail that speaks volumes about time passing, about change and about being tired. Tired of the things that we do, big and small, over and over again — routines, habits, whatever. Tired of inertia. Tired.
In the movie, she’s heading upstairs to see her lifelong friend, played by Vanessa Redgrave, who is dying. Difficult, indefinably sad, sadly familiar, mentally exhausting, emotionally draining. A test of sorts. An expression of human-ness. The Meryl Streep character goes up the stairs to see her friend, as she’s done so many times before, knowing that there’s nothing she can change about the situation, knowing the disease is winning, but she goes, because that’s what one does. She goes and takes with her a smile and a sense of strength. She goes and becomes a distraction for a moment. She goes, knowing that nothing will change but she did what she could. And then, when she’s run out of words, when she can no longer disguise her own sadness, she knows it’s time to go.
Inertia is an easy state to live in. Safe, boring, predictable…and unhealthy. A greyness sets in, a melancholy air — subconscious sighs signaling time wasted, dreams put aside. Moss begins to grow on your north side without your even realizing it — metaphorical moss…at least we hope so. But we do our duties, we get the work done, knowing that every day isn’t a birthday party and every announcement doesn’t deserve streamers and confetti.
In the movie, the Vanessa Redgrave character passes on and the Meryl Streep character is no longer in evidence. Their moments together were good, sincere. They fought a good fight. They played their roles. But their scenes have ended. It’s time to move on.
It’s easy to imagine the Meryl Streep character, in her grey, tweed suit and sensible shoes, stoically going through the motions for the rest of her days. But in my own imagination, this movie has a different ending:
The next time we see the Meryl Streep character, she’s in workout clothes and wearing pink sneakers. She’s taking a Zumba class and meeting new people. She’s left her job in the mold-infested office building, where it never seemed to be daylight, and has let the sunlight back into her life. She’s returned to her life-drawing classes, something she hasn’t done for years. And she’s written a book.
This isn’t the end of the movie after all. It’s the beginning of…something else.
There’s a commonly used phrase these days that says, in so many words, “You choose the life you live.” Nice, neat, uber-positive and Oprah-worthy. I don’t think it’s true, though. I’m all about the positive and all about the half-full metaphor. My own version of the quote, though, is more like this — “Life happens. You choose how you respond to it.”
So, don’t beat yourself up for coming up against something unchangeable. Congratulate yourself for fighting the good fight. Then put on your work out clothes, let in the daylight and respond! Respond with gusto! Respond with open arms! Respond with streamers and confetti! Respond!
That’s what Meryl Streep would do.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
– Barack Obama
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