Pondering other people's youth...

So, a few years back, my husband and I scanned a ton of old slides for my parents. We watched as each tray-full revealed painfully young, gangly versions of the people I call Mom and Dad. We saw faraway places (my dad did a stint in the Navy during the Korean War), we saw nattily dressed youngsters who turned out to be elderly aunts and uncles and family friends, and we marveled at how America had gotten a lot more big and full of itself in the past twenty or thirty years. It was a sentimental journey because we knew some of the travelers. It was nostalgic. It was mostly fun and light.

More recently, we scanned a bunch of slides for some of my parents' neighbors. They, too, are family friends, but not quite on the same level of familiarity as many of that first bunch of images we handled years ago. To add heft to the occasion, these slides were being scanned for an upcoming sober family occasion, when family was gathering around a very ill, fading member. These films were full of many strangers, at least to me. Over and over, I popped the slim cardboard squares into position, hit some buttons, and waited while the pictures contained therein were magically transformed into digital images. The act was performed quickly, because the task was somewhat urgent, and yet I found myself staring at the pictures that appeared on my computer screen. Children, dressed in past clothing styles, sporting old-fashioned hair cuts; yards and homes now mostly gone, or changed beyond recognition. People in a small town, riding ponies on the street (my goodness, when was the last time you saw that around these parts?) Men working on and posing with their cars, showing off, hamming it up for the camera. Women in swimsuits and pretty dresses, smiling at the viewfinder.

My husband and I scanned slide after slide, marveling at the likely correct assumption that many of the featured faces had departed this earth, that the children we studied in the pictures were now older than we are. We grew quiet and thoughtful. At one point, he turned to me and said, "What do you want out of life? What do you want to accomplish?"

And I lazily replied, "I don't know." I didn't want to think about it, the impermanence of my time here, the fact that we are all just passing through. Even as a believer, even while I consider myself a citizen of Heaven, I still want my time here on this little blue planet to matter. I don't want to end up a 2-D image so removed from this moment that it seems fictional. What do I want to do? To be? To accomplish?

I still don't know. I should probably say that I want to lead others to our Creator, and I do. Is that enough? Does any of it really matter? We're just blips on a radar, really. Dust. Not to God, but to this world. It's a sobering thought, yet also refreshing in the same way that realizing no one is watching my show was liberating. We're all going to be pictures on a screen someday, and likely not the Big Screen that many in this media-saturated culture are shooting for.

Let's just live, and be kind, and give our best, and bite back the things that maim others. Ours is but a fleeting moment on Earth, after all. A snapshot, if you will.

Good flick

I don’t normally tout or slam films—they’re fine, but I’m not a big movie person and it takes something special to get my attention. Finding Nemo did, if you recall, and there are a few big-people movies that stand out in a crowd, but by and large I feel concern for our society and the amount of attention and time we give to something unreal. And movies are, for the most part, unreal. They’re a means of escaping the real. (Television is the true enemy—but that’s a post for another day.)

Then, there are movies that don’t fit the mold. Some biographies, historically accurate movies, movies that do not come to exist for the same reasons that pop culture creates films. One such example is The Unforeseen.

I’ve been waiting to rent The Unforeseen for about 2 years—at least it feels as if that’s how long it’s been on my “wait” list in Netflix.* I saw it previewed on PBS way back when, and my curiosity was piqued. It was presented as a pretty fair-minded, multi-sided documentary about suburban sprawl.

And it succeeds, in my opinion anyway. It’s very good. It made me think about the issue from different angles; it forced me to consider all the factors that go into building most modern-day housing developments. It provided the basics in understanding how these projects are funded, and who benefits the most, and which beneficiaries take on the greatest risks. It gave a face, a voice, to all the different players in that drama. It will break your heart a little, and make you angry a little. It’s poetic like a Cormac McCarthy book, and it tells a story that almost anyone living in America today has been affected by.

Would it cause you to change your mind about buying a home in a “sprawl” development? If your mind is made up and you love the house, then I doubt it. But if you’re just considering it, or if there’s another of these housing plans in the works near you, I can see where it might light a fire under your bum.

So, when you get a chance, I’d recommend you see it. But ladies, be prepared: Robert Redford (who helped produce it) makes an appearance, and you may be shocked to see how time has worn him down. There remains very little evidence of the Sundance Kid.

* Didn’t want you to think that I was contradicting myself—we have the bare-bones Netflix package, which permits 2 movies per month, not at the same time…and we sometimes remember to watch that many.