The Life Not Lived

I have always thought that crying at the movies was a female only occupation. Today I found out differently. Apparently 56 year old men can cry at the movies also. Lets backup a little here. Caroline and I have not had a weekend with Carter in a month. We made the arrangements and picked Carter up at noon. We went to see the movie Up. A Pixar movie is always a good bet and this was no exception. It is the story of Carl Fredericksen, who at age 78 not only feels but knows that the life he had wanted to live had passed him by. Aided by an 8 year old wilderness scout, Russell, Carl goes on the adventure he had always dreamed of having. That by itself is pretty poignant stuff but not the stuff of tears, at least for me. For me that came in the first fifteen minutes of the movie.

The movie starts with Carl as a young boy at the movies watching a newsreel of his hero a world famous adventurer and explorer. Cut to Carl walking home and living his own adventure in his head on the way. He meets a young girl with the same interests and well one thing leads to another. The next five or more minutes is a montage of scenes of their courtship, marriage, discovering their inability to have children and the sadness of that and then the rediscovering of their earlier passion for adventure. They start saving for the trip to their first adventure and then how life gets in the way and slows and finally stops their dream as they do the responsible thing. When Carl finally has the money for their long forgotten trip his beloved wife takes sick and dies. Carl is left alone to wonder just how it all happened that his life just passed him by. At that point the tears start.

I'm no Carl Fredericksen but there is a part of my life I never took the chance to live. I grew up reading National Geographic and reading about Lowell Thomas, Admiral Bird and John Wesley Powell. I wanted to take pictures or make documentary films of all the exciting places and exotic animals there were in the world. Of course I got married too young and joined the military to avoid the draft and so there went 5 years of my life and then we had the boys. So I did the responsible thing and got a job and worked at being a family man. Then one day I saw an add for a entry position with a documentary film company in Seattle. So on the way home from work I talked with them. They were interested in me and liked the pictures I had made over the last several years. I never breathed a word of it to Caroline. The job would have been low paying and required lots of travel and time away from home. So I did the responsible thing and put it out of my mind.

Today while watching the montage of Carl's life I remembered that long forgotten chance and choice and so the tears. If you are at the movies and see a middle aged or older man with tears on his face don't laugh and think he is an old softy. It just may be that something in the movie hit a little too close to home and he is just remembering a long forgotten part of his life and is wondering what amazing adventure he missed.