Always a Light

Its a quiet morning, my coffee is hot, I'm making an attempt to reign in my routine and focus and live my day as though there is a reason to be up, motivated, and focused. We recently watched Jason Reitman's new film Up In The Air, starring George Clooney. I'm not a film critic and lack the vernacular and syntax to really talk about movies but i have a bit of a theatre back ground and feel that i know good acting, excellent directing, and very good scripting when i see it (as do most people, saying i have a theatre background just makes me feel like i have an expert opinion--which, incidentally, i don't). Jason Reitman is on his way, erm, up as a writer/director and following Thank You for Smoking and Juno this is another film that tackles a tough character in a delicate economic environment.

George Clooney plays Ryan, a man who gets paid a lot of money to travel around the country and fire other company's employees because "their bosses don't have the balls to do it themselves." He takes downsizing and spins it, telling people at the end of their ropes and facing desperation and depression that "anyone who has ever started an empire has sat where you are today and it is because they sat their that they were successful." And, he essentially lives his life in flight, traveling 270 days a year.

Enough movie critic.

I was struck by Up In The Air in a similar way that i was struck by Crazy Heart or A Serious Man, films so inherently different from one another in story and form and yet bound by the common notion of humanity at rock bottom. These movies being reticent of writers like Cormac McCarthy or Raymond Carver, unafraid to expose the darker heart of who we are. Individuals we may well be but our capacity for hurt and fear is collective.

Up In The Air shows the reactions of employees, some long serving, as they are "downsized" from jobs and the look of desperation and fear blankets them all. I have never sat where they sat--running out of work as a carpenter is not so formal as clearing out a desk in an office environment--but i have felt what they portrayed. Both the initial shock and then, at the end, as they talked about how they made it. Waking up next to their spouse and standing tall for their children... Somehow we make it. The grace of God, the needs of our family, the drive within that yearns for purpose and focus.

I don't know what it is that makes me tick, what I'm specifically passionate and energetic about. I can't seem to wrap my mind around a career or a life's focus. I have stood in the midst of jobs and known that i wasn't a "lifer" and the old timers around me were not the men i wanted to be. I have a faint notion of greatness, a sense of idealism that drives me away from what pays the bills and on towards something that full fills my passions.

One of my favorite quotes is from Isac Asimov, who said: "If i have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." I'm trying to climb those shoulders and each day is another boost to the top. I know i am not the first man here, feeling like he's slipping to the bottom, but sometimes it feels that way. The darkness is at best lonely and cold and at worst isolated and hopeless but armed with the simple things in life and family by my side I suppose there is always a light burning ahead.