What is it about Legends of the Fall that stirs something so deep in me? The wild, animals, unrequited love, beauty, family. It makes me want a different life. One with passion, nature, soul, hard work, and peace. I don’t fully understand it or what it means.
Is it just a movie? Are they just emotions? What am I missing in my life? This movie and Francis Mallman. They stir something deep within me. It is a longing for a wild part of me that is free. I might also be addicted to a lonely painful life. Maybe i only feel deeply when i long for not just an unrequited love but an unrequited life.
I’m surprised that this many years later that movie can stir me in the same way. Do i just long to be in my early 20s when the movie first began to stir me? Or is there something that will always live in me I don’t understand or know how to set free?
I almost want to cry. Is it sadness? Frustration at an inability to live out this part of me that longs for the wild, authentic Pennsylvania towns, old homes, fire, music, love making, pipe smoking, solitude, animals, the natural, historical, nostalgic appreciation, River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, Into the Wild?
What do I do with this? What is this feeling? Is it just love? Am I just a romantic? Are these just fleeting romantic feelings?
Or is this a call to my heart? Is this a call to depth? Is this a call to God?
What would scratch this itch? Normal everyday life just doesn’t seem to cut it. And here is where I feel lost because no direction comes from this feeling except to think about living on a farm or out in nature. But this can’t all be about where I live.
But it does seem to be about letting my self out and being more who I am. Not the manager or the therapist but something else, something primitive, something raw that is more connected to me. Not trying to be someone else or fit into molds already out there but somehow just settling into the wild hairy man inside that is no longer worried about judgment or convention and sets out on his own path.
The clean pretty life we lead misses the deeper calling of our humanity to be in love with others, nature, and life in general. The heart. It beats like a primal drum we are all muting in modern civilization. My longing to connect to a more indigenous self. No wonder I find interest in the authenticity of First Nations culture.
I want a different life. I am passionate and full of heart. Deep meaning. Not just a job or a normal suburban life. Something more wild and free, creative and soulful, singing and expressive, dirty and real, sexual and grounded, loving and integral.
This expressive life connects my desire for deep reading and thought as well as music, aesthetics, food and drink. It makes all my interests make sense.
So how do I take this from its internal entrapment and move it external?
What is my vocation/career and what is my life?
If I die tomorrow I will not have lived. I will not have lived my life. Do I just want to preserve this painful longing because its all I’ve been able to feel? Because it’s the only way I’ve been able to feel?
I think of how Pacifica [Graduate Institute] made me feel. I think of how the Island [Vancouver Island] made me feel. I think of how a church would make me feel.
Is my calling some way to engage all this?
Should I be looking at entrepreneurial and business minded ideas? Is my calling to depth in regards to my whole life, my ‘work’, or both?
I only have questions and no answers.
Maybe if I keep asking myself questions I will always set myself up to not know.
I am afraid to live out my answers, so instead I ask questions.
The answers are here — right here with me. I no longer need to ask all these questions and pretend not to know. It is here. It is clear if I choose to look. But I choose not to look and pretend I don’t know, pretend to be so confused and obtuse about my own life that calls out to me daily. I have the answers right in my heart. The answers I think are connected to my questions are not my answers. They would not make me happy.
I am ready to look at my answers, to know them intimately. To re-connect with them. Jason, they are right there in front of you, staring at you, waiting for you. They are patient and loving and devoted to you. When you are ready to truly see, they will be ready to act.
