What would you do with One Week to live? Today over lunch I watched the movie One Week by Michael McGowan.
I think it is the greatest movie I have seen in a long time. Not just because it fully features ridiculous amounts of Toronto and Canada and places I have been and seen. Not just because I was tired and therefore I cried a lot (cheesy I know). Not just because I know most of the songs and it features many of my favourite bands.
I think it was because of this line: fighting with his fiancée Sam, Ben declares that his adventure is the right choice – he says
“If I can make each one of these days a life – that has to be a better choice”
What a way to express our life here on this world. Tell me I’m wrong – but I believe that we all just want every day to be a life. We want to live – OH we want to live. We want appreciation, acknowledgement, wisdom, new experience, meaningful relationship and love – OH do we want love. St. Augustine, in one of my favourite conclusions ever states,
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in You, Lord.”
This may have not been the conclusion of the movie – but, alas, I believe that the reason that the movie makes sense to us is because we know we all share the same feelings. It does NOT take the news that we are terminally ill for us to realize that we want to burst outwards in expression – we want to be in intimate deep connection and love with others – be appreciated for who we are. Ultimately we want to rest in the Lord. I am 1000% convinced that this forms the base of the longings and desires of every person who has ever lived.
I think adventure, much like Ben found out, can be vitally important to our lives. In most respects this throwing off of some responsibility and virtual spreading of our wings helps us to realize what we long for in our life. Ben turns from Sam and spreads his arms to the Rockies and says “This is right!” But Samantha has told him that he cannot drive around (and run away) forever. Trying to fulfill our heart’s restlessness only through adventure and experience is dangerous simply because it is impossible. We can never satiate our longings that way – we can only realize in moments of clarity what we long for.
In fact, if I could borrow a common expression and practice used by Ronald Rolheiser, after the realization an adventure can bring, one of the only ways in which we can grow in our state of restlessness is by turning the other way. By quieting our souls and activity completely and trying (time after time) to search in our hearts; through prayer we can begin to meet God in a fuller way. In this development of our relationship with him we can slowly begin to claim some of the feelings of love that we long for. The full consummation of this relationship is not realizable in our current state of affairs. However, I have found in my life, that the only times when I feel like I am able to be slightly more fulfilled in my life is when I take time to pray and reflect after the occurrence of an outward seeking adventure or even just in the middle of the most mundane of activities (often while longing for one of those adventures). I am so pathetically bad at this. What I can do, however, is consider those people I know in life that seem the most content, and fulfilled in the every day, mundane, domesticated and ‘boring’ tasks of life. I think of my Nana, for one, and I see a lady who has spent countless hours focusing on deepening her relationship with the Lord simply so that she is able to understand her existence while resting further in God’s heart.
A friend of mine posted a quote about stories helping us to determine how to live our lives – the story of this movie helped me to concretize I think a lot of the above thoughts and realize that I must keep struggling to reflect, pray and cry out to God in the alone and simple times of the day in order to move towards rest.
