Alive.
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
~ Pema Chödrön
lent 8. From anemic to alive
Easter Sunday! How do you even write about such magnificence? About such an unprecedented ending? About such an epic journey?
Because Lent has felt particularly epic to me this year, I’ve been re-watching a number of my favorite epic movies—the ones that are unique, rich and deep, sad and sweet, but ultimately redemptive! First was Cast Away. Next was The Truman Show. This week is was Hector and the Search for Happiness. These aren’t the formulaic blockbuster hits that get the most views; these are a little slower, more human, and enormously more profound… because they echo our own journeys. At least the journeys of those who are awakening!
“Once upon a time, there was a young psychiatrist called Hector, who was very satisfied with his life.” So begins the tale of a man with a very “tidy” life, a “tidy” relationship and home, and a “tidy” clientele. But it doesn’t take long in our story until Hector becomes deeply unsatisfied—disturbed with a nameless malcontent. He begins to question the meaning of his work, his partnership, and his happiness. So Hector decides to go on a journey, upending his tiny little predictable life and engaging the risks and uncertainties of the world in a quest to get to the bottom of what actually makes people happy. (See the video synopsis at the end.)
Exploring the high life in Shanghai, talking philosophy with a Tibetan monk, risking life and limb in Africa, and finally chasing an old college flame in Santa Monica, Hector curates perspectives on the elusive commodity called happiness… only to conclude that happiness is not just the result of pleasant experiences. Instead it is a complicated brew of sadness, fear, and joy, and these disparate emotions lie at the heart of what it means to be human. When we allow all three to lend us their wisdom, happiness just might find us.
There is an implicit message in Hector’s story that our lives too become anemic when we slip into autopilot, simply doing the things we have always done but without full engagement. Without passion, without risk, and without pushing into new territory. When we stop living and just start existing, life becomes a dim shadow of its rich intent. This is the concluding transformation of Hector’s quest: “His world was complex, sometimes even chaotic, and he liked it that way. He took comfort in the rich, random patterns of his life. He listened to his patients with real patience. Sometimes with surprising results. And he learned to love like he had never loved before.”
And this is why full, risky, messy engagement with life is absolutely necessary—because this is what enables us to truly love.
This is perhaps a strange lead-in to the resurrection, but Jesus was (and is) the greatest Lover of all time. He ran the gauntlet of the full human experience, tasting sadness, fear, joy, and every other emotion that we know all too well. “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, undaunted by its shame.” And it wasn’t just the cross he endured, although that was surely the apex; he endured misunderstandings, judgments, slanders, abandonment, and betrayal in his unswerving quest to love this world into redemption.
As Lent wraps up for the year, I hope your liminal space of the last 40 days has invited you toward unlearning, questions, fearlessness, timelessness, adventure, awakening, and awe. A blessed Easter to each of you!
growing your soul
“Far be it from me… and forgive me for asking… and I don’t mean to pry” (Hector’s favorite line), but are you happy?
serving our world
How free are you to love?
takeaway
Come alive.
soak
This final resurrection chant… "The streams of my Father’s [Mother’s] Love run daily through me, from the holy Fountain of Life to the seed throughout the whole Creation.”