Friday, May 6, 2011

Hereafter

Can't sleep. We just watched Hereafter...definitely one of those movies designed to make you think. Spoilers follow if you don't know the general gist of the movie.

One of the main characters is a kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old, who loses his twin brother in an accident. He becomes convinced after his brother's death that if he can just talk to him one more time he'll feel better. I remember that feeling. Rebecca died when I was about that age. She was 6 months old. I spent many years coming to terms with the fact that the time we had with her when she was alive was all I was going to get. There's no going back, no redoing things, no final conversation once someone is gone. The experience is over and all you have left are the memories, whether good, bad, regretful, joyful...some endings are final. The choices you make day to day have to be the choices you would be comfortable with if your loved one died tomorrow.

Another thing on my mind triggered by movie-watching...if you know where things end, you can use that to make the present a better place. As the Flaming Lips say "Realize the sun doesn't go down / it's just an illusion caused be the world / spinning round." Life is cyclical. Some cycles last a lifetime and end when you pass the world on to your kids. Others last only a day, starting over when you wake up tomorrow. Embrace where you've been, and use it to inform where you're going, but don't dwell on something which has ended. You've moved on to a new cycle. Who knows how long this one will last? "Realize that life goes fast / It's hard to make the good things last."

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Random thoughts on Bin Laden's Death

Do Sasha and Malia have to go to school tomorrow? "Please excuse my daughters from class today. Their father was up late announcing the death of an international terrorist and they didn't get to bed until late in the evening."

One of the clues that led to the identification of this "palace" as Osama's hiding place was that it was a million+ dollar home with 12 foot high walls and no internet or phone lines. Welcome to the 21st century...NOT being connected is more suspicious than being online. In Pakistan.

Obama is a badass. He completely put his presidency on the line with this. Authorizing ground forces to go into a friendly country (even with Pakistan's permission) could have destroyed his administration if things had gone wrong. I'm reminded of the pirate situation awhile back, when he authorized the assassination of the hostage-taking pirates halfway around the world and then gave a press conference where he said "Yes, I authorized that. Buh-bye now." I don't recall in my lifetime a president using our military so effectively and nonchalantly efficiently. He trusts what they can do and really only acknowledges his position in passing when he talks about what they did. I continue to be impressed. Maybe he's not the perfect walking-on-water president we might like, but he's damn good. Easily the best of my adult life.