I'M WATCHING...

Okay, I'll admit that getting me to watch a movie is like pulling teeth. Sitting still for two to three hours is a difficult task for me. I have watched two movies lately, though, that have really entered into my consciousness and have me thinking about the deeper meaning behind the film, and the current of truth behind life, that which binds us together. My favorite kind of movie are the ones that enter your thoughts in this way.

SEABISCUIT

For about two years, I have owned a copy of the movie "Seabiscuit", but I never watched it until a couple of weeks ago, the evening after hiking the Four Cache Loop. It was the story of the jockey, Red Pollard, that I found most intriguing (however, after reading more about his life, I see that the movie was historically inaccurate and simply leads one to believe falsehoods). The idea that this broken down jockey, and trainer down on his luck, also all happen to meet Seabiscuit, a horse ruined by bad training and sold for $8000 to Charles Howard, an automobile enterpreneur with a broken heart, is an amazing example of "kismet" to me. These forces combined in an overwhelming display of mutual healing. The belief and understanding that they all showed in each other combined to make Seabiscuit the greatest racehorse of his era, even beating a much larger and stronger opponent, War Admiral, in the match race Seabiscuit supporters finally obtained.

Overall, it is a movie about redemption, and this is why I love it. I love the idea of redemption. It speaks to my heart about fairness. Eventually, the whole world can see the good in someone, something that has been broken down, but never gave up trying to be perfect. Finally the heavens open up and illuminate the golden aspects of the subject in a moment of triumph. In this movie, it is the last Santa Anita Handicap, with Pollard back in the saddle after suffering potentially career-ending injuries and Seabiscuit recovered from a torn ligament the following year. They healed themselves together on Howard's ranch, with Pollard joking that they had "four good legs between them", and Seabiscuit ended his career soon after, with the horse that nobody wanted now, in 1940, horse racing's all time highest money winner.

INTO THE WILD
The second notable movie I watched recently is "Into the Wild", of which is the subject of a video I posted below. Eddie Vedder was nominated for several awards for his musical score for this movie, and I think the song in this video is the best song of the soundtrack, and most concisely sums up the concepts embraced by Chris McCandless, the subject of the movie. This is a movie based on a real life story of an extraordinary man who decides to take on the Alaskan wilderness, after finding little about city life, material wealth, and his screwed up family to keep him interested in staying engaged in that reality. After graduating from Emory University with grades "good enough to get into Harvard Law" and a substantial college fund still intact, he instead walks away from all of that and goes "on the road". In many ways, this movie is a road movie, with part of the fun trying to guess where he is now with geographical clues.

The truth of McCandless is beset with controversy, especially his last days. In the end, what we want is redemption, but it is not granted here. There is no happy ending, no resolution to his quest, no reconciliation with his family, no triumph over wilderness. There is only the stuff of legend - Bus 142, on the edge of the Denali National Park, where Chris spent his last 189 days, and where people come pay their respects to a man who embraced the ecological vision and love of a simple life of the authors he admired - Thoreau, Tolstoy, and London.

The movie is breathtaking and incredible, introducing us to complex characters that he meets during his journey, and showing us his struggle to transcend his demons and survive with little more than a bag of rice and a gun in the Alaskan frontier. We see him reading, writing, struggling, hunting, foraging, and experiencing ups and downs. The part I liked best is his open armed embrace of the wilderness - a moment where he stands, arms outstretched, taking it all into his heart. I have felt like that before, I know that feeling of bliss when surrounded by natural beauty. For me, it is also a moment of wonder, thanks, and closeness with My Creator, a feeling of being One with God, but I don't know if McCandless felt that way.

After reading more about his life later, I find it intriguing that only a quarter of a mile from his "magic bus", where he was finally trapped in a cycle of starvation, was a tram that could have given him safe passage over the river that kept him from heading back to civilization when his luck turned. Safety and survival were only a brief hike further away, a fact that he missed because he apparently had a poor map and was inadequately prepared. Some people condemn him for all he didn't know, and I am not sure what side I agree with the most. I do think that if you are going to take on an experience like that, it is best to be as prepared as possible. He did educate himself beforehand, but then also had too much to learn yet before the true test.

As a parent, I am bothering by his lack of consideration for other people. Characters coming into his life repeatedly ask him to reconcile with his family, or at least let them know he is okay. His parents went through extreme emotional distress when he simply disappeared, without forewarning, explanation, a phone call, nothing. To me, this shows an incomplete transcendence over his past. His healing was not complete, his heart was not love, yet. A letter, a postcard, one simple gesture to acknowledge his family, even though he was still angry at what he considered the falseness of their lives and marriage, would have gone a long way towards easing their deep anguish over losing him. No matter what happens in this life, no matter what roads we take, our parents love us, and the love of family is a truth that supercedes this life.

In the end, perhaps he did overcome this, as suggested in the movie when, in the end, he scrawls out this message in a Tolstoy novel - "Happiness is only real when shared". We find true happiness only in our connection with others, and it is love, only love, that is the true meaning to our existence on earth.

The movie will make you think, and will overwhelm your senses with natural beauty and the desire to seek it, like McCandless did. Live, truly live, by going wild and taking it all the earth has to offer, with the lightest carbon footprint possible. Take it all in, all the natural wonders God has created here on Earth.

But prepare yourself properly first....

And check out the video, listen to the words and see the images. It was an incredible movie.

Redemption

Easter Sunday, I was sitting in church, listening to the minister discuss the day's reading. It was the story of the two Marys who went to the tomb of Jesus to attend to his body, and found instead an angel of the Lord, who told them of the resurrection. My thoughts wandered to images of Jesus's mortal body and the physical and emotional torment he endured before dying on the cross, images mostly brought to life from the watching of "The Passion of the Christ", a movie I almost wish I had never seen, except that it awoke in me strains of a greater spiritual nature and compassion for Christ. I was thinking also about the teasing of the Roman soldiers, as they pushed the crown of thorns deeper on Jesus's forehead, mocking him about being "the King of the Jews", and asking him where his God was now. For me, the resurrection was more meaningful in terms of redemption than in Jesus returning to earth, though this might be a subtle difference that comes down to the same idea. It is important to me that after all Jesus suffered at the hands of the soldiers, in the end, he was redeemed. In the end, his God did come and swoop him up, or transform him, or both (although I am very curious about the actual process). He did get was due him, which was the eternal spot at God's right hand, the lasting hereafter, the ability for his death to atone for the sins of those who came after and who believed. Justice was served. And perhaps that is the reason I fall for redemption, because I want to believe in justice. I want to believe in the ability of man to transform, to be lifted up and changed in an ephermal way. I want the underdog to win, to rise up and succeed under oppression. Redemption is the great eqaulizer, the bringer of justice in an unjust world, and without it I believe the eventual state of man would be true hopelessness.

With the help of that Easter sermon, and a lingering boost from a Friday night festivities with my previous co-workers, I saw the way redemption had played out in my own life recently. I had experienced in my professional life some serious disappointments that made me humble. My friends from college saw me as ambitious and driven, and I vowed to never give up on my dreams, but I had become the token underdog and lost some confidence due to having worked some jobs that were beneath my education level and percieved worth. While it was true that some of these experiences changed me in ways that made me stronger, more aware, and more versatile, they had also robbed me of some of my youthful zeal and ambition.

Since moving to the Houston area about five years ago, I had worked at two veterinary practices with similar situations. In both positions, I came into a practice that was much busier than anything I had worked at before, and which required a higher skill level and efficiency. In the first practice, there had been a girl who considered herself the "lead", and resented anyone who matched her talents. She made my first year very uncomfortable, for I do not like confrontations and tensions in the work place and want to just be able to do my job and get along with the team. She had it out for me for reasons I can only speculate on. She continually caused problems with the rest of the staff, but the doctor was reluctant to fire her because she was just so good at what she did, and she used her force of intimidation to keep me down, although I had more education and experience than she did. After that first year, though, the doctor and I had reached a level of comfortability together that gave him the sense of security that he needed to fire her and rely on me to take over her role as the "lead". For the next few years, I continued to rise in authority, responsibilty, and pay level, above another girl who had been there longer and beyond which they were able to compensate me for. When I left that practice, the same doctor who had been reluctant to pay me the initial wage I asked, and gave me his reasons for offering a lower wage, was calling me with the same moony sadness that I had heard in the voice of my old college boyfriend when I dumped him and he was asking me not to, offering to pay me whatever wage would be enough to cover the additional costs of childcare that I had given as my reasons for leaving.

That was some redemption there, seeing how my growth potential had changed the perception of my value, and how I was worth more than what they originally had me pegged for. However, it is the most recent experience that really drove a point home to me. I went from that practice to an Animal ER that prided itself on offering superior service and talents. I worked with a team of incredibly gifted, talented, devoted animal nurses and doctors. These people were amazing, and I know the employer, who had been a friend of mine, had a reputation for paying well, but my initial offer was only fifty cents more an hour than the job I had left. It worked out to be worth more, because I did not have to pay child care costs for my newborn baby, and could be home with him during the weekdays. Initially, anyways, I felt it was a fair offer, because my skill level was not nearly as high as some of the other girls I worked with. They for the most part did not share my education level, but they had been doing this job for so long and worked so hard to be the best at it that in terms of skill level, I truly was worth less than them. Some used this to their advantage, and made deliberate attempts to make me feel worthless. In those early days, there were days I went home crying, and often I wanted to give up. I felt like I was in water above my head and swimming with sharks, and it was difficult to gather the courage to get back up and try again to rise to the level of that playing field.

There was a manager there, Erin, who made most of the pay decisions and who, it was believed, had a good sense of people. I think she was close on, but missed the mark, missed out on the subtleties of human nature. One thing she told me during my 90 day review drove this point home to me. She told me that my former doctor had come to her in help of finding someone to fill my shoes at the practice I had left, and she had let him look through some applications and gave him her perceptions of the potential prospects. She asked him what qualities I possessed that he was looking for in someone to fill my role, and he gave her adjectives such as "bold", "a leader", "strong", "forceful", "aggressive" - the qualities I can bring out in comfortable surroundings. She told me that did not jive with her impression of me, which was "meek and submissive", and basically told me I needed to get some chutzpah and communication skills (ironic memory here of a college lover who told me "what sets you apart is your ability to communicate"), and only gave me a small raise. She gave another girl who came in behind me a much bigger raise (because she had threatened to quit because the sharks were tearing her apart emotionally), but also told her she had "a problem with authority", when in actuality she was a creative thinker who came up with unique solutions for long term problems and had the "chutzpah" to make the changes she saw where needed.

It came to pass that Erin left the practice to work for a head hunter service, and then my employer slowly went mad with paranoia. During the time of crisis at the ER, during the increasing insanity level of our boss, the sharks jumped ship immediately. Our staff went from fifteen to six within a couple of weeks, and during this time, those who were left were looking for a leader and cohesion. I stepped up to the plate, and walked into the role I had filled before, managing this time a nervous wreck of a staff. In the end, I left the practice one of the two most cherised employees, one of the two my crazy boss pleaded with to stay with her, and when I and the other girl walked out, the doors of the clinic closed behind us, leaving the doctor crying in the dark, demanding that someone listen to her, help her fight the demons only she could see.

During the time I was looking for another job, I had gotten an offer that put me in the higher wage bracket for veterinary technicians. The initial offer was comparable to what I think some of the higher ranking sharks had been making. Crazy as it seems, I turned that job down because I was looking for something that would allow me to follow my dream of working in animal behavior management. The story goes that I kept praying for God to send me the perfect job, and then these people would call me back with a higher offer, and I would turn them down, and then I would pray again, and then they would call me back the next day. In the end, they came back to me four times, and the final offer was higher than I had ever heard of a technician making, with free medical benefits and a sign on bonus. Basically, I ended up accepting an offer that was six dollars more an hour than I had been making the previous year, an unheard of jump for this type of job, and with the total package included, had acquired a 33% raise in salary. It turns out, as well, that this job is a lot less physically demanding than most technician positions, offers great perks, and best of all, allows me to spend most of my time in behavior management of the animals, and offers incredible growth potential for me professionally.

So on a Friday night before Easter, I had gone out to meet some of the former EC staff memebers for dinner and drinks. I sat next to Erin, who asked me about my job. When I told her about the final offer, her jaw dropped in astonishment. She, this veterinary headhunter, could not believe how much I was making. None of the other girls who had left the EC had ended up with jobs as good as mine, or that paid as well. "Have you ever thought about why they wanted you so bad?", she asked. She told me she knew at least five other techs who had applied for that job, "so it is not like they were desperate or anything. So why did they want you so bad?" When we talked further, she decided it must have been my college degree and my experience in behavior.

I, however, think it is something more. I think it was redemption.