Stephen Trout

Harold Crick is in perfect control. A senior IRS agent, (who also
happens to be the main character in one of the best films
released in recent years, Stranger than Fiction), Harold has
“the efficient life” down, figured like a flawless tax return:
counting each brush-stroke of his teeth (35 up and down, 35
side to side), the exact number of paces to the bus-stop (57);
even the precise twists and turns in his Windsor-knotted tie.
By all appearances, Harold is the paragon of expediency, a
calculator on two legs. Unfortunately, all this has led to a "deep
and endless ocean" of mundane existence. Obsession with
control can do that to you.

But on one particular Wednesday, Harold (played with perfect pitch by Will Ferrell) is given a great gift. When a blip in his wrist-watch begins to mess with his ordered world, (for us, fill in the blank with any broken situation or relationship), his uneasiness begins to rise exponentially. On top of this, an audible voice (the author of his life-story, played by the always amazing Emma Thompson) begins to follow him, narrating his every move, and even tipping him off to his “imminent death.”
 

What Story am I In?
According to director Marc Forster, Stranger than Fiction seeks to grapple with the question, "How much of our lives are being written? How much control do we really have over, say, whether we get hit by a bus or not?" Do such questions matter? And who really wants to ponder their own death anyway? (Hint: see Ecclesiastes 7:2 “…death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.” Hmmm, apparently pondering the brevity of life and our story’s end can actually open the door to wisdom!)

With death now closer on the horizon, Harold’s new obsession has a better aim: a desperate need to learn the kind of story he’s in and what his life means. He begins to question: Is my life just a comedy? A cosmic joke? Or is it a tragedy, with death and taxes (the actual title of his story) the only “sure thing"? What's the author up to anyway?

"Shut Up and Leave Me Alone!"
A pivotal moment in Harold’s story comes when he's called upon to audit Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a young bakery-shop owner who sees through Harold's controlled exterior. As she presents to him some warm chocolate-chip cookies she's made just for him, he must decide whether he can accept them as a “gift,” or insist on paying for the cookies - avoiding the scarier, out-of-control feeling of accepting an act of love. (Isn't this the scandal of grace? Like the prodigal returning to his father, we insist on paying our way, but the Giver will hear none of it.) The next scene pictures Harold, sad and alone on the street-corner, screaming at the heavens. Can we relate?

But what if life was actually a “Shakespearean comedy” (as counselor Ed Welch has suggested) – one where our lust for control and insistence on paying was not the final word? A story where the freedom to love, and a taste of unbelievable celebration - one better than any fiction can imagine -was the theme that transcended even death? Who would not want to be part of that story?

Diagnosing Control
Stranger than Fiction doesn’t reveal all the reasons for Harold’s obsessive-compulsive behaviors, but as physician Michael Emlet has noted, OCD tendencies can reveal many things: on the biological side, causes such as head trauma, strep-throat, and low-functioning thyroid may all play a role. Call these important factors the physical, “outer-side” of who we are. Obsessive hand-washing and house cleaning, repeated trips to check the locks on the doors, even persistent counting (like Harold) and compulsive hoarding of certain items has its reasons, and biological factors are sometimes known to play a part.

But a holistic view of what it means to be truly human also takes into account our “inner side,” or the “heart,” with all its desires, cravings, and assigning of value to people, places and things in our lives. The "heart of the matter" is revealed by good questions: What fears are really controlling me? What cravings (think approval, or comfort, or peace) tend to lead me around, and make me anxious and miserable? (There seems to be some evidence that this powerful “inner-side” of desire can even influence the neurochemicals in our brains. How could it be otherwise, as we are a unity, an interconnected soul and body? Just think of how persistent anxiety or stress can make you feel old, or even cause physical illness.)
 

In addition, an “It’s all up to me” mentality in our heart can certainly lead us to seek mastery and control over our environment - as Harold desires - with self-imposed rituals and perfectionist tendencies to keep everything (so we think) in check. Or think of living with the persistent fear of people (see Prov. 29:25), which seeks to keep anxiety minimized by being liked, and never looking bad or making a mistake before the eyes of others. Add to this our efforts to make up for, or “self-atone,” when we’re plagued with persistent guilt, and it’s alot of plates to keep spinning in the air at once! Keeping danger and unwelcome surprises (including death) at bay while saving face can be at the heart of a desire to control our world. It’s also a cruel master, keeping us enslaved to fear and unable to rest or trust.
 

Control-Freaks Take Heart
Thankfully for Harold, learning to give up control means a better end. For us too, it can come as a great surprise (and relief) to learn that our struggle with “feeling out of control” can actually awaken us – if we let it - to a better story, one in which the grasping need for control need no longer have the control over us. And it begins, as it did with Harold, with hearing the author’s voice.
 

Little did we know that this stranger than fiction, real-life story offers exactly what we need!
 

'I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not' ~ Mark Twain

There’s a decadent French pastry cafe near us that’s to die for: Isabelle Brien’s has creamy cappuccino, buttery almond croissants, savory french toast (of course), and a sweet name that reminds me of my grand-daughter. It’s a fine breakfast with ma belle femme on a Saturday morning.

Which is why I’m thinking about film critic David Edelstein’s recent remarks on the film Midnight in Paris, when he boiled down the basic philosophy of Woody Allen's films in one sentence: "Life is meaningless… the best you can do is find a good restaurant." Seems like alot to ask from your beef bourguignon! However, food and feasting do hold incredible meaning for us - if we'll listen.

And in Midnight, Allen has his fine restaurant. Paris is romance par excellence, and we're treated to a visual feast from the opening credits. In classic Woody style, he also sets the table for us with some great questions. Yes, we do often find ourselves dissatisfied, with our time (doesn’t every age?), and our circumstances can feel meaningless, as even Solomon discovered – so what to do? Have another croissant! Merci! Or, as Paris suggests, why not escape to the “good old days” - even the ones that haven't happened yet?

Nostalgia Calls
On vacation in the “City of Lights” with his upwardly mobile fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams), Hollywood screenwriter Gil Pender's (Owen Wilson) dissatisfaction with life kicks into high gear. If only he could go back to the golden age of literature - Paris in the 20's! Hear the heart of Hemingway; see the flair of Fitzgerald! If only he could leave the shallowness of his day-job behind, and finally pen something with substance! If only he could marry Inez, and return to Paris to write - ironically, a novel about “a guy who owns a nostalgia shop.”
 

But while Inez indulges her “if only” with the insufferable Paul (Michael Sheen), a pseudo-intellectual who prefaces his sentences with “If I’m not mistaken…”, (a sure clue that he probably is), Gil strolls deep into the heart of the city. Eventually, he sits down to rest…
 

And at the stroke of midnight, an elegant taxi appears to whisk him back in time, to the golden age of his dreams! There’s Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) to dispense literary advice, Salvador Dali (hilariously played by Adrien Brody) to show him the essence of love and art, and even Ernest Hemingway himself (in a great turn by Corey Stoll) to suggest the meaning of life:
 

Hemingway: Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?
Gil: Actually my fiance is pret-ty sexy...
Hemingway: And when you make love to her, you feel true and beautiful passion, and you for at least that moment lose your fear of death...
Gil: ...No, that doesn't happen...
Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing...and when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino hunters I know, or Belmonte [the matador], who is truly brave, it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds, until it returns, as it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again...think about it.
 

L’amour! Surely this is the meaning of life? But when Gil finds himself smitten with the alluring Adriana (Marion Cotillard), he soon discovers (surprise!) that she is also dissatisfied with her own age. Alas, this has all been tried before, with gusto: wise Solomon went this route to cure his meaninglessness, and 700 concubines later, he came to a different conclusion (see Ecclesiastes 7:2).
 

We Want to Change our Circumstances…
As Gil loses himself in a past surrounded by his real-life idols, Allen flirts with the question: Is a change of circumstances, or even the ability to “turn back the clock” the real issue? Is romance, or beauty the meaning we’ve been searching for all along? Or might there be something even deeper?

CS Lewis offered some wise words on the matter, which can help us:

"Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers..."

- Lewis, The Weight of Glory
 

Could it be that the search for the good old days are less about the days (or whatever it is we think we need), and more about our hearts? Perhaps this is why "the past seems so much more vivid, more substantial, than the present," writes A.O. Scott. But maybe "... the good old days are so alluring because we were not around, however much we wish we were..." Maybe this is what Solomon was getting at when he said,

"Do not say, "Why were the old days better than these?" For it is not wise to ask such questions.” Ecclesiastes 7:10
 

Midnight in Paris is full of whimsy and wonder, a great film to enjoy and to help us explore what really matters: where we look for meaning. So the next time you take a bite or lift a glass, pause and wonder...and give thanks. And do not wonder if, come midnight, there is a greater, more lavish feast coming. It's on the way.

One of the wonderful, albeit unexpected side-effects to love is that you're forced, often kicking and screaming, to confront your own selfishness. Like the Polaroid photo that's shaken while developing (sounds like a song?), expect to have your heart rocked before your love (or lack of it) comes into focus.

It's the relational secret we'd like most to avoid; eHarmony probably won't detect it. Yet its roots are as old as the garden, and just as snakey. What is it? We love to get our own way.

Take marriage, for example - a common scenario. The once-blissful couple has, to use an apt metaphor, let their precious garden fill with weeds, and at some point one or both makes the decision not to get up off the couch (or move from the computer, or say "no" to the million other available distractions and pursuits) and aggressively pull them up.

Soon after, because weeds grow like...well, weeds, they're jolted into action by an icy wind; a chilly interaction, a hard stare, or a bitter remark makes one look out the window and notice that the garden is nearly gone.

Ugh ... how quickly is everything that makes love so good and nourishing easily swallowed up by a selfish green weed-monster called "a divided heart." Before you know it you'll be using the "two ships passing in the night" cliché as well.

The Cost
So what to do? How do you love when it gets really hard to engage another and you want to say "enough!" The only way I know that you can possibly do this is to grasp the profound meaning of what love really is; that in essence, as Tim Keller notes in King's Cross, "all life-changing love [the kind that really transforms you] is substitutionary sacrifice."

Keller notes,

"Think about it. If you love a person whose life is all put together and has no major needs, it costs you nothing. It's delightful. There are probably four or five people like that where you live. You ought to find them and become their friend. But if you ever try to love someone who has needs, someone who is in trouble or who is persecuted or emotionally wounded, it's going to cost you. You can't love them without taking a hit yourself. A transfer of some kind is required, so that somehow their troubles, their problems, transfer to you.
There are a lot of wounded people out there. They are emotionally sinking, they're hurting, and they desperately need to be loved ... The only way they're going to start filling up emotionally is if somebody loves them, and the only way to love them is to let yourself be emotionally drained. Some of your fullness is going to have to go into them, and you have to empty out to some degree. If you hold onto your emotional comfort and simply avoid those people, they will sink. The only way to love them is through substitutionary sacrifice."

Do you see how there is always a cost to the lover? It will inevitably cost you to love someone well, to pour into a spouse, child, hurting friend, or the needy outcast on the street.

When Lily Dies
I love how Keller fleshes this out further, using the character of Lily Potter:

"...When the Voldemort-possessed villain tries to lay hands on Harry, he experiences agonizing pain, and so he is thwarted. Harry later goes to Dumbledore, his mentor, and asks, "Why couldn't he touch me?" Dumbledore replies that "Your mother died to save you ... love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign ... [but] to have been loved so deeply ... will give us some protection forever."

As you grasp this, again and again, your love will become more sacrificial, humble, and less about self (your main problem). You will begin to see the world with new eyes. And one day, when you look out your window, you will even see beautiful fruit growing on the vine.

Such a Lonely Word article here.