Skip to main content

It Is Up to Us to be Great

In the movie, “The Adjustment Bureau,” ambitious politician David Norris (played by Matt Damon) and rising star ballerina Elise Sellas (played by Emily Blunt), fall in love. All is well until their romance is abruptly interrupted by mysterious forces.

The Adjustment Bureau is a team of men in dark suits and felt hats who pull various maneuvers in an attempt to keep the couple apart. For reasons we’re not clear about, the Chairman (God?) of the Bureau (Heaven/Eternity?) sees trouble with this relationship. It does not fit into his “plan” for either of them.

After a series of odd and sometimes dangerous situations, David Norris, in a clandestine meeting arranged by the Bureau, is confronted by a dignified man in a suit and hat named Thompson who is some sort of senior advisor to the Chairman.

He has a serious discussion with Norris in which Norris is told in no uncertain terms that he is to no longer see Elise. Or else his memory will be erased and he’ll be, well, a blank slate for the Chairman to write whatever he wants on it.

David Norris is not the kind of man to be told what to do. Bewildered by this strange set up he responds to Thompson:

David Norris: What ever happened to Free Will?
Thompson: We actually tried Free Will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire, we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages for five centuries... until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought maybe we just needed to do a better job of teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. For six hundred years, we taught you to control your impulses with reason, then in 1910, we stepped back. Within fifty years, you'd brought us World War I, the DepressionFascism, the Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that point, a decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix. You don't have free will, David. You have the appearance of free will...You have free will over which toothpaste you use or which beverage to order at lunch, but humanity just isn't mature enough to control the important things.

David Norris: So you handle the important things? The last time I checked, the world is a pretty screwed-up place.
Thompson: It's still here. If we had left things in your hands, it wouldn't be.

“Humanity just isn’t mature enough to control the important things.” Like the biblical David’s stone, that one hits us right between the eyes.

We might think these days, Would to God, or the Chairman, or Whomever, that He or She would get back control of things and straighten the world out and put it on a more noble path of higher living. Just force us all to behave and stop this exasperating scene of tumult and preposterousness and psychopathy currently running the show here and across the world.

The hard truth is, there is no One, or Thing, or Force, controlling us but ourselves. It’s up to each of us as human beings to treat one another and our world with respect and kindness and reverence. That great line from the brilliant astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, comes to mind: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

If there is a Chairman out there in the cosmos, he has given us the power to form our lives in responsible, beautiful ways. We control our destiny. We make our own choices. There is no one to blame but ourselves if we screw all of this up. Out of moral blindness, out of unchecked selfishness, out of cruelty or inner wounds or broken minds or just messy living, we are the ones who brought us to where we now are.

But, as our Olympians are showing us, and not just ours but all of them across the world, there are innate forces deep within all of us that can lift us into incredible courage, into stunning self-discipline, into noble feats of sportsmanship and brotherhood, into healthy competition, and into community and cooperation that reign down the glories of humankind’s unending potential for greatness, excellence, and incorruptibility.

No men in suits and hats, no Chairman, can ever stop that.


© 2016 Timothy Moody

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We are Made for Human Connection

There are words from Brandi Carlile’s song, “The Story,” that I might sing, and perhaps you, too. “All of these lines across my face Tell you the story of who I am So many stories of where I've been And how I got to where I am But these stories don't mean anything When you've got no one to tell them to” You don’t have to be single or alone to feel the depth of those words. Someone in a longtime marriage or relationship might feel them, too. The voyage through life takes each one of us through an assortment of experiences. Some of them ennoble us. Some crush us. Some lift us beyond ourselves and carry us into the lives of those who need us. And some carry us to those we need. Some experiences are burdens. Others ease and encourage us. Some leave us baffled and unsure. Some build confidence within us and are so affirming that we grow in substance, in courage, in tenderness, and sympathy. As we age, the lines in our faces can represent the hurts we have not yet resolved. Or t

Remembering Dr. Bill Craig

In Memoriam  Dr. Bill Craig January 1, 2020 In the Hebrew Bible, we see from the life of Moses, and the Psalmist, Isaiah and others , concern for the problem of living rather than the problem of dying.   Their primary interest was not how to escape death, but rather, how to sanctify life. Bill modeled that kind of wisdom.  The brilliant novelist Louis L'Amour, who wrote bestselling books about the American West, what he called “frontier stories,” basically said the same thing. He wrote, “The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.” No one attempted to sanctify life and get more out of the trail than Bill Craig. He was a deep thinker, a gifted veterinarian, a rugged and unbreakable man with the kindest heart and the purest motives.  He was a loving and devoted husband, father, and grandfather. Karen, Shalor and Melissa, Kellan, Nolan and Carter, were his world. They meant everything to him. I guess he had faults, but I don’t remember any of them.  There was o

Do we need a new country?

Have you seen the elaborate, stylish, opulent television commercial for Cartier? The original commercial seemed to go on forever, a full three minutes. They have shortened it now, but it still drips with ostentatiousness. It is conspicuously pretentious in spite of the beautiful music and the sleek panther and the stunning scenery and the elegant model dressed in a striking red gown. The commercial takes the viewer through an amazing montage of dreamy landscapes and famous cities and spectacular stunts while moving past a giant expensive watch and finally to a glittering diamond bracelet modeled by the woman in red. Each time I see it I keep wondering who the target audience is. It seems to be such an over the top expression of unbridled greed and materialism gone ape. In a time when much of the world is starving and millions are still out of work here at home it seems bizarre that Cartier would spend what has to be millions on a television commercial celebrating 165 years in