"No one is good enough to save himself... so awake my soul tonight to boast nothing else." - Sandra McCracken

Sunday, September 25, 2005

lessons from "Good Will Hunting"

I sat down and watched "Good Will Hunting" last night and quickly remembered why it is one of my absolute favorite movies. I decided to copy this scene and post it on here for two reasons. First, it's one of the best monologues I've seen Robin Williams perform... so full of emotions! Second, and most importantly, it reminds me of how much I desire to live and experience life! I want to explore the world around me and see God's creation. I'd love to meet people of different cultures and share a cup of coffee with them. Stuff like that...

This scene reminds me of those desires. It also reminds me to take off my mask and let people know the real me. Anyway, here it is:

SEAN:
I was thinking about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. I stayed up half the night thinking about it and then something occured to me and I fell into a deep peaceful sleep and haven't thought about you since. You know what occurred to me?

WILL: No.

SEAN:
You're just a boy. You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.

WILL: Why thank you.

SEAN: You've never been out of Boston.

WILL: No.

SEAN:
So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written... Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've gotten lucky a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term "visiting hours" didn't apply to you. And you couldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent confident man, I don't see a peer, and I don't see my equal. I see a boy. Nobody could possibly understand you, right Will? Yet you presume to know so much about me because of a painting you saw. You must know everything about me. You're an orphan, right? Do you think I would presume to know the first thing about who you are because I read "Oliver Twist?" There's nothing you can tell me that I can't read somewhere else. Unless we talk about your life. But you won't do that. Maybe you're afraid of what you might say. (Sean stands and begins to walk away)

It's your move Chief.

1 Comments:

Blogger Kristi said...

I watched Good Will Hunting on Saturday night... crazy huh? we should have had a Good Will Hunting party... I love that movie as well, and this is a particularly good scene you relayed here. It's the challenge to move beyond mere words, to realize some things can't be encapsulated in the confines of language, like seeing and breathing in the Sistine Chapel. And yet... like Sean... to remain humble even if you have had that joy and someone else has not. Not to parade around your experiences and your knowledge, like that cocky psuedo-intellectual from Harvard. And then there is the pursuit of what I call 'something more'... to not settle with what knowledge you do have or what places you have seen, but to have an unquenchable curiosity and thirst for knowledge and sucking the marrow out of life...

8:37 AM

 

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