Pictures of Home: "The Last Kiss"

Just back from watching the movie "The Last Kiss". I knew little to nothing about the movie going into it. All I knew is Zach Braff was in it. I haven't seen enough of Zach's stuff to form an opinion... Most of the people in my community raved about "Garden State" & I watched it, all excited to listen to the deep insights that were reportedly in the movie.... but yeah, maybe it was just that my expectations were too high from all the hype, but I walked away feeling like I didn't get it. Sure I saw the message about the choice to be medicated & 'happy' & safe from life vs. the real gift of being alive & feeling the whole range of human emotions.... but maybe the message just didn't hit me as hard as I'd expected.

But I have the sneaking suspicion that Mr. Braff takes on redemptive projects, i.e. projects that try to remind us of what is good, what is love, what is life to the full & so I went (half heartedly) to see if this movie had something to say.

And it did.... depending on how you were listening.... It's not a movie for the faint of heart in some ways. I saw a young couple with their grey haired mom get up & leave after the 2nd or 3rd (or maybe more) sex scene (not that it was really that bad, just not something I'd bring a grey haired mother, or my non-gray haired mother, to see). I'm not sure what others would think about it. I'd almost say all 20-30 something year olds should be forced to watch it as life training, but I sort of doubt that most would 'get it', unless they'd already lived it or were living it. (And, maybe as a guy you get a totally different message than if you're a woman, so I guess I'll have to just listen to other's thoughts on it all.)

It's a good post-modern story about love & life & self & others.... It paints a very honest, very real (painfully so) picture of what it feels like to be a north american on the edge of 30 & the pathos & tension that that includes... It's a very 'cold shower' view of things - I could say that you don't walk away happy, don't walk away feeling good about your life 'cause you're faced with this non-glamourous, non-happy view of your life.....

....the only problem with that would be is that I did walk away from this movie happy. Very happy. Full of whimsy & wonder & thankfulness &, like I wrote about in the last post, this sense of an emptiness waiting to be filled, of a life full of possibility & unknown.

The movie paints the picture of the tension we live in between security & adventure. Something is ingrained within us that we long for stability. Deep down we sort of want the white picket fence lifestyle - or, more accurately, we reach a point in life where we want relationships that will not leave. We want to establish something permenant on this planet, and that, primarily, is finding that 'love of our life', the one we want to spend the rest of our lives with & start a family that (optionally) involves having & raising kids.... This is the one side of our desires.

The other side longs to not 'settle down', to never grow up. We long for adventure, romance, freedom. We long for something new, something exciting, something to take our breath away, to make us feel really alive, something that pulls us all together into the moment, to enjoy the sweetness of whatever it is we're doing.

And it seems, that the two sides are opposites, mutually exclusive.... and so we, whether we realize it or not, hold the two in tension, sometimes dipping more to one side or the other, but always being pulled back & forth in our desires trying to do the impossible & have both at the same time.

And the movie basically allows the characters to ask the questions of the moment, to explore their longings for security & adventure, for safety & freedom. And with the questions come choices &, honestly, I was pleasantly surprised with the message of the movie. It didn't clearly tell you what to do with your life (thankfully), but it challenged the audience to choose.... to find what matters to them & to choose that over & over & over. To make mistakes, to try again, to do "whatever it takes" with the things that matter most to you.

It was raining when I left the theatre. I drove the car back to the hotel with only the noise of the wind & rain & road to accompany me. That & a full heart.

In our culture, we become 'adults' at 18, though I think that's almost a bit of a fib. It seems that at 18 we're confronted with a future where the questions don't have answers. Up until that point, our parents guided us & guarded us &, in some ways, guarded us from our choices. At 18, we reach another phase of self-assertiveness & self-awareness; we realize that we are not our parents.... Mostly we realize that we don't really know who we are apart from the family we've grown up with, but we realize that there are dreams & desires & personality in us that are both alike & seperate/different from our family. Eighteen really begins the quest to figure out what the questions are, to know what it means to be a 'grown-up'.

At 25 you realize that your life looks nothing like what you expected. Or if it does, you wonder if now that you have what you wanted, is this really what you wanted? And, as one of the characters says in the movie, "The world is moving so fast now that we start freaking long before our parents did because we don't ever stop to breathe anymore"

But at 30, you find you don't have any more answers, but you're starting to figure out what the questions are (maybe).... or maybe you just stop caring about the questions & are more interested in living. If you figured out what the questions were, you probably wouldn't like the answers 'cause they'd be too challenging, or wouldn't made sense until you lived them anyhow.

But all in all, in your 30's you start to realize that you have a new ally in the journey - you. After all the pathos of your 20's, after all the feelings of failure that you can't get this whole adult thing right, that you didn't do as good a job as your parent or others around you, after years of feeling like you suck & thousands of hours of hiding from each other to try to pretend that you're together, after all of this, you start to get the sneaking suspicion that everyone else is just as screwed up as you are & no one really knows what they're doing either..... and it's at that point that you receive grace - there is a moment of salvation, of redemption, where you stop trying to be everything & release yourself to simply recieve love & acceptance.... and this is where you learn to start treating yourself with grace, where you learn to befriend yourself & this is where the freedom of choice really starts to come into play 'cause you stop making choices based on what others want, or what you think others want & you live out of your center - out of the truth of you that "people may not want to hear", but they can deal with the truth......

....and this is why, in the middle of the rain & the melancholy & emptiness, there is joy. This is why life feels rich & good tonight. Because it is filled with choices & I have no idea what the future holds, but I'm learning to continue to choose, to do whatever it takes to stay with the things, the people, the passions & moments that matter most to me. And the real freedom is to know how much I'll fail in all of this & make the wrong choices. But each choice leads to another. God comes to us, as shown in an episode of "Joan of Arcadia", as the eternal, "What will you do now?", "What choice will you make in this moment?" and this is so much part of His love & grace to us, that He never gives up on us, but always offers us another second chance, again.... & again.....

There's an image at the end of the movie of Zach laying on his front porch, sprawled out like he should have a chalk outline around him & by the door is the welcome mat saying "HOME". This becomes for me a beautiful picture of home. In this context "Home" is more than the white picket fence dream; the place of 'security'. "Home" in this case means the things (and mostly the people) that you refuse to let go of; the relationships you choose to fight for (or to lose for). Home becomes something that is never fully 'secure', never fully 'safe', but is something in which you must constantly choose, amidst many mistakes, to prioritize it/them, value it/them & show your love through your actions as you choose to tenaciously hang on to what/who matters most.