When I was in high school, a good friend of mine ran for student body president. His campaign slogan was “Unity through Individuality.” Admittedly, back then, although I understood each word, I didn’t fully understand what his slogan meant. Older and wiser now (ha!), I think I’m finally getting it. People need each other, not so much because we are alike, but because we are different. Or as my son often reminds me, we should celebrate diversity, for it is through diversity that we become and remain strong.

There have been several movies recently that have reminded me that, although each of us is different in our own way, that is how it should be. In other words, we are unique, not freaks. A boy with a grossly disfigured face turns out to be, well, a normal, thoughtful boy in Wonder.[i] A group of circus performers, that most people consider to be freaks, embrace their uniqueness and share their talents for their own self-fulfillment and for the enjoyment of others in The Greatest Showman.[ii] A mute woman discovers love with a misunderstood water creature in The Shape of Water.[iii] Similarly, a young, gay man learns that love comes in different flavors, including his own particular one, in Call Me By Your Name.[iv]

But celebrating diversity is not as easy as it sounds. The world keeps getting smaller, but that only makes differences in culture and language more pronounced. William G. Eggington, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University, described it this way:

“We are most comfortable when we are with ”our people.”… But … we spend more and more time proximate to people from other families, … other cities, regions and nations…. In essence, we interact more and more with – and are closer and closer to – people who speak in strange tongues and who do strange things. We are living in a world of strangers….

“We can choose to respond to [these] challenges … in a number of ways. We can withdraw into our sameness – our family, friends and regional and national identities – setting up barriers that protect us from interacting in meaningful ways with those who are different. Some people of the world have chosen to do this by withdrawing geographically behind walls of national or religious exclusion. Others choose to do it in more subtle ways, relying on technology, so that even though they are physically surrounded by those from different backgrounds, they can always be “virtually” at home, encased in their familial comforting iPod music, their electronic Facebook and Twitter friends, and their same-minded political blogs and digital social networks…. Our challenge then is to overcome our … reluctance to interact with those who come from different languages, dialects, and cultural backgrounds.”

So how do we break down those artificial barriers we build around us? The simplest answer is often the best. In Wonder we are reminded (quoting American self-help philosopher, Dr. Wayne Dyer), when choosing between being right and being kind, chose kind. Here is a trailer from the movie containing a collage of scenes illustrating this theme:

To kindness we can add acceptance. The Shape of Water is the story, set during the Cold War, of a mute woman who falls in love with an amphibious creature who was captured in a South American river and is being held in captivity for experimental purposes. My favorite quote from the movie is by the mute woman (given through an interpreter) about the water creature: “When he looks at me, the way he looks at me, he does not know what I lack or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am, as I am. He’s happy to see me. Every time.” What a wonderful world it would be if each of us felt that kind of acceptance.

In Call Me By Your Name, a teenage boy falls in love with an older (but still) young man who is visiting his family for the summer. The setting is in the 1980s, well before same sex relationships were considered acceptable. In my favorite scene from the movie, the young man’s father encourages his son to find whatever works for him. Everyone should have parents this understanding, regardless of the issue:

Part of celebrating diversity is realizing that each of us have unique attributes. Often, though, we realize we have these unique attributes but are not too happy about them. Most of us don’t like being different. Instead of hiding those differences, we should show them off, as did the circus performers in The Greatest Showman. Here are the words to one of the songs from the movie, This is Me,[v] which should become an anthem for all of us who feel different (and therefore alone) in one way or another:

• When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
• I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out
• I am brave, I am bruised
• I am who I’m meant to be
• This is me
• Look out ‘cause here I come
• And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
• I’m not scared to be seen
• I make no apologies
• This is me

Through emphasizing our uniqueness, we can team with other unique people to accomplish almost anything. I love this quote from the book, The Boys in the Boat,[vi] written by Daniel James Brown, about the U.S. gold medal rowing team of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin:

“Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made up of conflicting stuff…. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower…. And yet, at the same time … no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does….

“The psychology is complex. Even as rowers must subsume their often fierce sense of independence and self-reliance, at the same time they must hold true to their individuality, their unique capabilities … [I]f they are to row well together, each of these oarsmen must … be prepared to compromise something in the way of optimizing his stroke for the overall benefit of the boat….

“And capitalizing on diversity is perhaps even more important when it comes to the characters of the oarsmen. A crew composed entirely of eight amped-up, overtly aggressive oarsmen will often degenerate into a dysfunctional brawl in a boat or exhaust itself in the first leg of a long race. Similarly, a boatload of quiet but strong introverts may never find the common core of fiery resolve that causes the boat to explode past its competitors when all seems lost. Good crews are good blends of personalities; someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to think things through; someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That’s the steepest challenge.”

Our challenge is similar.  Let’s be proud of our own uniqueness and kind and accepting of others and their uniqueness. Through our unified individuality, we can create a society of inclusion for everyone, regardless of race, religion, geography, political view, gender, economics, or physical or personality characteristics.

[i] Wonder

• Production Company: Lionsgate, Mandeville Films, Participant Media
• Director: Stephen Chbosky
• Screenwriters: Stephen Chbosky and Steve Conrad (based on the novel by R.J. Palacio)
• Starring: Jacob Trembley, Owen Wilson, and Julia Roberts
• Release date: November 17, 2017

[ii] The Greatest Showman

• Production Company: Chernin Entertainment, TSG Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox
• Director: Michael Gracey
• Screenwriter: Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon
• Starring: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams and Zac Efron
• Release date: December 20, 2017

[iii] The Shape of Water

• Production Company: Bull Productions, Double Dare You, Fox Searchlight Pictures
• Director: Guillermo del Toro
• Screenwriter: Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor
• Starring: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon
• Release date: December 22, 2017

[iv] Call Me By Your Name

• Production Company: Frenesy Film Company, La Cinéfacture, RT Features
• Director: Luca Guadagnino
• Screenwriter: James Ivory (based on the novel by Andre Aciman)
• Starring:Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, and Michael Stuhlbarg
• Release date: January 19, 2018

[v] This Is Me, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

[vi] Daniel James Brown The Boys in the Boat, pp. 177-79.

The Bible tells us the love of money is the root of all evil (see 1 Timothy 6:10). While I believe there are other causes of evil (such as power and bigotry), folk-philosopher, Will Rogers, described the money problem this way: “Too many people spend money they earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people that they don’t like.” Admittedly, everyone needs a certain amount of money to survive and be happy. We can’t really enjoy life if we spend most of our waking hours worrying about our next meal or where we will sleep that night. The documentary, Happy,[i] reports that studies show you need a base annual income of about $70,000 to be happy; income above that level, though, does not really contribute to our happiness. “Money is only a tool,” author Ayn Rand said. “It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” In short, once we have enough money to get by, our happiness depends more on our attitude about money than the money itself.

This point was driven home to me by two movies I watched over the holidays. Same Kind of Different as Me[ii] is the true story of Ron and Deborah Hall and their efforts to help others who are down on their luck. Ron is a very successful art dealer, but his marriage was struggling. Ron had cheated on Deborah. Instead of throwing him out, Deborah said, “This is all I’m asking from you. If you never do that again, I’ll never bring this up again and you are welcome to come home.” Ron replied, “If you will do that, I will do anything that you ask me the rest of our lives together, to show you that I love you.” What did Deborah ask Ron to do? Based on a dream she had, she asked Ron to go with her to the inner city to find a homeless man she saw in a dream. Here is Ron’s introduction into the inner city and the world of the homeless:

Through helping the homeless, and one mysterious man in particular, Ron saved his marriage and developed a friendship with Denver Moore that surpassed all racial barriers and economic classes. Together they ultimately wrote a book about their experiences and friendship, which became a platinum bestseller. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over three and a half years, and became the basis for the movie. Denver and Ron split the profits from the book. Denver used his half to help others in the homeless community. Ron donated his half to the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth. This compelling story has now raised over $80 million for the less fortunate. In looking back at his experiences, Denver summed up life with this insight: “Whether we’re rich or poor, or somewhere in between, we’re all homeless, just working our way back home.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum is All the Money in the World,[iii] the fact-based movie about the kidnapping of the 16-year-old grandson of J. Paul Getty and the grandson’s mother’s desperate attempt to get the boy’s grandfather to pay the kidnappers’ ransom demands. At the time (1973), J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world, having a net worth of over $2 billion, which would be about $8 billion in today’s dollars. If Getty earned 10 percent per year in interest on his net worth at the time of the kidnapping, his earnings would be over a half a million dollars A DAY! But as an unsurpassed miser, the kidnapping of his favorite grandson was not enough reason for Getty to part with any of his money. Here is my favorite scene from the movie because of how disgusting it is:

I am not necessarily saying that J. Paul Getty was evil, but who do you think was happier – Ron Hall or J. Paul Getty? Both men had more money than they could spend in a life time, but their attitudes about money, including what to do with it, were completely opposite. And you can only buy so much stuff and still get any satisfaction out of it. I love this quote from the comedian Steve Martin: “I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”

Ironically, All the Money in the World has been in the news recently for a different reason. Because of sexual misconduct claims against Kevin Spacey, who originally was cast as J. Paul Getty, the director, Ridley Scott, decided to re-shoot the movie with Christopher Plummer playing J. Paul Getty. Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams, the other two principals in the movie, agreed to the re-shoots. Wahlberg reportedly was paid $1.5 million for his efforts, but Williams was paid only the minimum per diem, which totaled less than $1,000. More ironically, both actors are represented by the same agency. As soon as I heard that, I thought of my favorite scene from Jerry Maguire,[iv] another great movie dealing with money and integrity. Here’s the scene:

Can you picture Mark Wahlberg hip-hopping around his kitchen, yelling at his agent, “Show me the money?” I enjoy most Mark Wahlberg movies and I believe actors, like everyone, should get paid for their hard work. But in August, Forbes named Wahlberg the highest-paid actor of the year, calculating his pretax and pre-fee earnings at $68 million. On the other hand, we have Michelle Williams saying, “I said I’d be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me. And they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted. Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.” Gender-pay disparity issues aside, which actor appears to have valued making an important movie over being paid to make it, and which actor valued the money over the finished product?

A good friend of mine has taught me a lot about values. Values are not destinations, but they can provide direction and motivation. We tend to let others (our parents, our employers our churches) tell us what we value. But our true values are evidenced by those things we do when we don’t have to do anything else. In other words, where we spend our free time is what we value most. How much do we value money? Is acquiring money our end or is it a means to help us enjoy what we truly value? Remember that the real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth to ourselves and others if we lost all our money. In short, money is a commodity that is constantly changing hands – and changing people.

In the final analysis, I believe we will be the happiest when we have figured out how to make enough money to satisfy our needs, and to enjoy a few of our wants, but use any excess wealth to help others do the same. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” While money is a necessary evil, let’s not let the love of it be the root of any evil in us.

Postscript: After writing this post and before its publication, Mark Wahlberg announced he will donate $1.5 million in Michelle Williams’ name to the #TimesUp legal fund. WME, his agency (and Michelle’s), also pledged $500,000 to the cause. A friend of mine and I had predicted this would happen. I am sure the imminent release of this post was pivotal in Wahlberg’s and WME’s decision (lol)! Anyway, good for them, although late. It’s nice to see that social pressure can sometimes cause people to do the right thing.

[i] Happy

• Production Company:
• Director: Roko Belic
• Screenwriters:
• Starring: Marci Shimoff, Gregory Berns, Richard Davidson, Ed Diener
• Release date: 2011

[ii] Same Kind of Different as Me

• Production Company: Disruption Entertainment, Skodam Films, One October Films
• Director: Michael Carney
• Screenwriters: Michael Carney and Alexander Foard
• Starring: Renee Zellweger, Greg Kinnear and Djimon Hounsou,
• Release date: October 22, 2017

[iii] All the Money in the World

• Production Company: Imperative Entertainment, RedRum Films, and Scott Free Productions
• Director: Ridley Scott
• Screenwriters: David Scarpa (based on the book by John Pearson)
• Starring: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg
• Release date: December 25, 2017

[iv] Jerry Maguire

• Production Company: TriStar Pictures, Gracie Films
• Director: Cameron Crowe
• Screenwriters: Cameron Crowe
• Starring: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Renee Zellweger
• Release date: December 13, 1996

One day I saw an old Australian aborigine with a boomerang. I watched with amazement as he threw the boomerang and it slowly circled around and returned back to him time after time. After several throws, he began tossing it harder and harder. I could see the frustration building on his face. Finally, I went up to him and asked if anything was wrong. He replied, “Well, it’s time to get a new boomerang but I can’t seem to get rid of this old one. The harder I try to throw it away, the faster it comes back to me.”

Actually, I made up that story, but I think there is an important message to learn from it. When we give to others, our good works tend to come back around to us. In the popular vernacular, we might say, “What goes around, comes around,” or that’s good “karma.” But I like what someone once called it, “The Law of the Boomerang.” But regardless of how we describe it, the principle is the same. Think about it. How many times have we done something nice for someone and then shortly thereafter they do something nice for us in return? For example, you might take dinner into someone who is sick or just moved into the neighborhood and they return your dish topped with cookies. It works in reverse, too. If you want to get punched in the gut, you don’t have to go ask someone to do it. Simply walk up and punch them, and invariably they will punch you in return. But I like the positive illustrations better.

In the Christmas movie classic, It’s a Wonderful Life,[i] George Bailey had lived a life of giving. But George experienced some hard times. In the end, though, when George needed help, all those townsfolk he had helped over the years came back to help him – in spades, making him “the richest man in town” – not just in money but in those things that matter most: family, friendship and love. Here‘s the closing scene:

Sometimes The Law of the Boomerang works indirectly. Sometimes someone does something nice for us, and instead of returning the kind deed to the giver, we pass it forward to someone else, or “pay it forward” as the movie by the same name described it. But I believe that even if we pay it forward, that kind deed, in some form or another, will eventually come back to us. Here is the scene from Pay It Forward[ii] that explains the concept that could change the world:

I love Trevor McKinney’s [Haley Joel Osment] response when the doubters complain that his theory won’t work – that the idea is too utopian. “So?” is Trevor’s response. Do we respond similarly when someone (or even ourselves) challenges our notions of helping others?

But I have discovered a corollary to The Law of the Boomerang known as The Corollary of the Donut, and if we don’t understand and put this corollary into practice, The Law of the Boomerang will be of little force or effect. I first learned about The Corollary of the Donut when I was a cub scout. Our den took a field trip to an observatory at the University of Utah to look through a large telescope at different planets and constellations. There was one constellation I will never forget. The guide focused the telescope on a group of stars that looked like a donut—these stars literally formed a circle with a hole in the middle. The guide then told us there was something extra else special about this constellation. She told us, if you looked directly at the donut of stars, they would disappear. You wouldn’t be able to see them. So you had to focus on the edges and through your periphery vision, you would be able to see the stars. I can’t explain scientifically why it worked that way, but it did. What does any of this have to do with giving? You see, if we give to another with the sole goal of getting that person to give us something in return, it’s like looking directly at that donut constellation and having those stars disappear from our view. We generally won’t get much in return. True giving, then, requires that we give out of love or friendship and not with the hope of getting something back.

I am a big Michael J. Fox fan and one of my favorites of his movies is Greedy.[iii] In the movie, rich Uncle Joe is getting old and all the relatives want a piece of his empire. [Spoiler Alert!] When Uncle Joe gets ill, and tells the family that he is no longer rich, but in debt, the family abandons him – except for Danny [Michael J. Fox], who offers to take care of him. Danny and his wife have Joe move in with them into their small apartment, and even offer to let Joe have their bedroom. But then, this happens:

In short, this is a great example of how The Law of the Boomerang and The Corollary of the Donut work. All of Uncle Joe’s nieces and nephews (but Danny) were being nice to Uncle Joe only because they wanted an inheritance. But Danny, who was kind and giving to Uncle Joe only because he loved and cared about him, ended up getting it all.

So how do we insure that our giving is motivated by the right reasons? Since we just celebrated Christmas, let me suggest you try the Santa Claus theory. I love Santa Claus, but not just because of the great presents he brings me every year. I love Santa because he understands and gives in accordance with The Corollary of the Donut. He gives because he wants us to be happy, not because he is expecting anything from us in return. I mean, even if we wanted to do something nice for Santa in return for what he gives us, what can we really do? He delivers his presents in the middle of night after we’ve gone to bed. If we didn’t find those presents under the tree or in our stockings on Christmas morning, we would never know he had even been there. We sometimes make a meager effort to thank him in the only way we can think of—by leaving him some milk and cookies by the fireplace on Christmas Eve, but that pales in comparison to what he does for us. He literally works all year long to bring us some happiness one day of the year. And judging by the pictures of Santa that I’ve seen, he probably could do without all those cookies and milk.

So why does he do it?  I have no explanation other than he must truly love what he does, for, at least with me, it isn’t because I have been especially good. I’m sure all the thanks Santa needs is to imagine the looks on our faces as we find the present we so desperately wanted waiting for us under the tree on Christmas morning. Why can’t we be more like Santa in our giving to others? Why can’t we have those same motivations that he has? Why are we so leery of the Santa Claus theory?

How would we react if we found that Santa Claus couldn’t handle his normal Christmas activities? That is the dilemma faced by Scott Calvin [Tim Allen] in this clip from The Santa Claus(e)[iv]:

What would we do in a similar situation? In reality, we are in that situation. Are we willing step up and give, like Santa, not just at Christmas, but all year long?

There are so many ways we can give to others. And the best gifts are not always the ones that cost a lot of money, and are not limited to this time of year. As Mother Teresa once said, “It’s not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.” Here is a list of 25 simple gifts you can give that won’t cost you a cent:

• Let someone with fewer items go ahead of you in the cashier line at a store.
• Smile at someone, even if you don’t feel like it.
• Hold the door open for someone.
• Read to your kids, your neighbor’s kids, or volunteer to do it at the library.
• Take your grocery cart back to the store.
• Forgive someone who has wronged you – even without an apology on their part.
• Make a phone call to someone you haven’t talked to in a while or who just needs to hear a friendly voice.
• Ask friends or family over for a board game night, and even let them win! (I’m kidding about that last part, which would never, ever happen at the Ludlow residence.)
• Do a chore around the house without being asked.
• Let someone change lanes ahead of you (and smile or wave when you do it).
• Apologize to someone you have hurt.
• Listen … really listen … without always trying to fix the problem.
• Send an email or text to someone you really appreciate.
• Put together a pack of your favorite recipes and pass them on to family, friends and neighbors.
• Make a list for someone’s birthday of why you like (or love) them equal to the number of years old the person is. For example, when my dad turned 90, my wife and I came up with 90 reasons why we loved him.
• Spend quality time with your spouse or your kids.
• Put together a playlist of someone’s favorite music or music that represents what that person means to you. My daughter did this for her mom one year for Mother’s Day, and it had the added advantage that I loved it, too!
• Share your umbrella with someone in a rainstorm.
• Tell your spouse (usually the wife) that she gets the day off, meaning you will cook, clean and watch the kids for an entire day. My son does this for his wife on her birthday, which she takes full advantage of by spending the day reading her new favorite book.
• Tell stories about someone you love to someone else you love. For example, tell your grandchildren about experiences you or your parents had growing up. You might even record them so future generations can enjoy them as well.
• Wash a neighbor’s car in summer or shovel their sidewalks in the winter (if you live where it snows).
• Share your knowledge or skill with someone else, whether it’s helping them to play an instrument, helping them with tax returns, or helping them learn tricks on how to use the latest smart phone or other device. (This is one gift I wish everyone would give to me!)
• Recognize a job well done.
• Help a fellow traveler lift his or her luggage into the plane’s overhead compartment.
• Give a friend or family member a hug (real men hug, you know).

I am sure you can think of many, many more no or low-cost gifts that you will probably find mean more to the recipient than many, if not all, the other gifts they get.

I hope you received everything you wanted this past holiday season, regardless of whether you were naughty or nice. More importantly, I hope we can all live The Law of the Boomerang and The Corollary of the Donut the whole year round. Remember, as Winston Churchill said it: “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

[i] It’s a Wonderful Life

• Production Company: Liberty Films
• Director: Frank Capra
• Screenwriter: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
• Starring: James Stewart, Donna reed and Lionel Barrymore
• Release date: January 7, 1947

[ii] Pay It Forward

• Production Company: Warner Bros, Bel Air Entertainment and Tapestry Films
• Director: Mimi Leder
• Screenwriter: Leslie Dixon (based on the book by Catherine Ryan Hyde)
• Starring: Keven Spacey, Haley Joel Osment and Helen Hunt
• Release date: October 20, 2000

[iii] Greedy

• Production Company: Imagine Entertainment
• Director: Jonathan Lynn
• Screenwriter: Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel
• Starring: Michael J. Fox, Kirk Douglas and Nancy Travis
• Release date: March 4, 1994

[iv] The Santa Claus(e)

• Production Company: Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and Outlaw Productions
• Director: John Pasquin
• Screenwriter: Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick
• Starring: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold and Wendy Crewson
• Release date: November 11, 1994

“Some use power to get sex, and some use sex to get power,” is the tag line of a book I wrote awhile back entitled “Unrighteous Dominion.” (I don’t mean this post to be a shameless self-promotion, but if you’re interested, there is a link to it at Amazon at endnote[i] below. And if you have read Unrighteous Dominion, I would love for you to give it a review, either good, bad or something in between since I only have three reviews right now. Okay, I’m done with the self-promotion – at least in this blog post.) My book focuses on a case of sexual harassment, but it is really about power, which, in my opinion, is what sexual harassment is usually about. Power can come from age, superior size or strength, position, or economic or social status. The imbalance of power generally creates an environment where effective communication is impossible, as the greater the power, the less chance there is of someone, particularly the victim, speaking out against the harassment.

You would have to have been in a coma the last few months to not hear about all the cases of sexual harassment that recently have been made public. Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Dustin Hoffman, Tom Sizemore, Jeffrey Tambor, Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose and even the beloved Matt Lauer, now and forever will be associated more with sexual harassment than as entertainers or news anchors. The women who came forward against these men have been named by Time magazine as Person(s) of the Year. Times editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, called it “the fastest-moving social change we’ve seen in decades, and it began with individual acts of courage by women and some men, too.” Tarana Burke, who created the “Me Too” mantra years ago, has called the coming forth of sexually harassed women, “not just a moment, it’s a movement.”  But unfortunately, we are hearing primarily from women who are now fairly well-known and generally powerful (although they typically weren’t when the harassment took place). Do women who are not household names, who don’t act in movies or TV shows, or write for newspapers and magazines, have a place to tell their stories? And there must be many of such victims.

Some studies show that as many as 88 percent of women in America have been harassed in some way, but 71 percent of women who have experienced sexual harassment do not report it out of fear of retaliation. Two-thirds of victims were not aware of their employer’s policy regarding sexual harassment, and just over half of the victims did not even know the person or department to talk to, even if they did want to report it. Clearly, then, we have a sexual harassment problem. The entertainment industry has taken notice, but what of other industries? Actor Ellen Page said it this way when talking about her own experiences of being harassed: “I have a platform that enables me to write this and have it published, while the most marginalized do not have access to such resources.”

Before this latest wave of sexual harassment allegations, a woman’s claim of sexual harassment was often summarily dismissed because of the difficulty of proof, as the evidence became a battle of he said, she said, my word against yours. Just ask Anita Hill how her claims of sexual harassment against now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas turned out. The movie, Disclosure,[ii] emphasized this, and turned the stereotypical claim of sexual harassment on its head by making the harasser a woman and the victim a man:

Hollywood has not always gotten it right, though. There is a long list of movies showing incidents of sexual harassment that audiences found to be funny, of worse, normal. I mean, who got offended by the movie Grease showing young men lurking under the bleachers looking up young women’s dresses, or exposing their underwear on the dance floor on national TV? We watched Cher (played by Alicia Silverstone) in the movie Clueless walk the sidewalk outside her high school as young men ogled her, and one comes up and puts his arm around her. Instead of getting upset at this type of behavior, we smile at Cher’s “Ew, as if” response. We get the message that sexual harassment training is just a big joke as Michael Newman (played by Adam Sandler) in the movie, Click, uses his magic clicker on the instructor to turn the training of a serious subject into a farce.

But occasionally, Hollywood has gotten it right.

Movies taking sexual harassment seriously usually involve men in power taking advantage of women in lesser roles, but with a desire to climb up the political or corporate ranks, as illustrated by this scene from Legally Blonde[iii]:

Fortunately, Elle had enough self-confidence to say no, regardless of the consequences, but for others, it is not that easy. Margaret Atwood once said, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Sometimes that death is actual death, sometimes it’s death to a career. Either is frightening, and something most men do not experience and therefore do not fully understand.

One of the best movies about sexual harassment is North Country,[iv] a fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States, Jenson v. Eveleth Mines, decided in 1984. It dramatizes the hostile work environment female mineworkers in Minnesota experienced. Here is just one example of the abusive environment these female workers had to put up with:

The good news is women have made great strides in eliminating these types of major hostile work environments, but as to what happens one-on-one behind closed doors, much less has been accomplished.

So what can we do about it? If you’re a female, learn your legal rights, understand your employer’s policies on sexual harassment and learn how and to whom to make a complaint. Remind yourself that it is okay to say no. And as humiliating as it might be, it’s okay to share your story with others. You might be surprised that others may have experienced similar abuse. And if others have, that shows a pattern in the perpetrator that could lead to his (or her) downfall. Most of the allegations of sexual harassment we have heard about lately have been generally accepted as true because of the recurring allegations of multiple victims toward a single perpetrator. It reminds me of the cartoon of a woman walking into her boss’s office and saying, “All the other women in the office are suing you for sexual harassment. Since you haven’t sexually harassed me, I’m suing you for discrimination.” But neither sexual harassment nor sexual discrimination is a laughing matter.

What if you’re not the victim but an observer of the harassment? Then be an up-stander, not just a bystander. Go to the aid of a fellow worker. Put the harasser in his (or her) place. We should always do what we can to protect the victim of bullying, which sexual harassment is a form of.

And if you’re the boss or supervisor, remember that with great power comes great responsibility. It is up to you to create the proper environment. It is up to you to act respectfully toward others, especially your subordinates. Give others their personal space. I love this quote from author, Miya Yamanouchi, who really tells it like it is: “Self-respect by definition is a confidence and pride in knowing that your behavior is both honorable and dignified. When you harass or vilify someone, you not only disrespect them, but yourself also. Street harassment, sexual violence, sexual harassment, gender-based violence and racism, are all acts committed by a person who in fact has no self-respect. Respect yourself by respecting others.”

May all of us take that message to heart and accordingly act with respect – of others and ourselves.

[i] You can find Unrighteous Dominion at: https://www.amazon.com/Unrighteous-Dominion-Warren-Ludlow-ebook/dp/B01FLFEV2Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1513087287&sr=8-2&keywords=Unrighteous+dominion

[ii] Disclosure

• Production Company: Warner Bros., Baltimore Pictures, and Constant c Productions
• Director: Barry Levinson
• Screenwriter: Paul Attanasio (based on the book by Michael Crichton
• Starring: Michael Douglas, Demi Moore and Donald Sutherland
• Release date: December 9, 1994

[iii] Legally Blonde

• Production Company: MGM, Marc Platt Productions
• Director: Robert Luketic
• Screenwriter: Karen McCullah (based on the book by Amanda Brown)
• Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, and Selma Blair
• Release date: July 13, 2001

[iv] North Country

• Production Company: Warner Bros., Industry Entertainment, Participant Media
• Director: Niki Caro
• Screenwriter: Michael Seitzman (based on the book by Clara Bingham)
• Starring: Charlize Theron, Jeremy Renner, Frances McDormand
• Release date: October 21, 2005

Recently, this blog has discussed some heavy topics and looked at some dark movie clips, so I’m lightening up a bit for this post. We are in the middle of the high school football playoffs, the college bowl season is about to begin, and the Super Bowl will be here before we know it. In short, it’s a perfect time to talk about football.

Football has taken a hit lately (pun intended) with all its injuries and now the threat of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, resulting from too many blows to a player’s brain. But it’s still America’s sport – at least for now. In the 2013-2014 school year (the latest year I could find statistics for), 1,093,234 boys played high school football, compared to 541,054 who played high school basketball, 482,629 who played high school baseball, and 417,419 who played high school soccer. Why is football so popular? Perhaps there is a smidge of truth in what New York Times best-selling children’s and young adult author, Laurie Halse Anderson, once said: “The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.” More likely, the popularity of football is due to what fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett said: “The thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.” Said another way, football teaches its players and fans not just the rules and strategy of the game, but many truths about life.

There have been at least 180 movies made about football, and there are some important life lessons we can learn from many of them. Here are just a few:

We should celebrate Diversity. Not everyone can play quarterback, just as not everyone can be the head of an organization. To be a successful football team, you need players who are good at offense, defense and special teams. And within each of those, you need individuals who have different skills. Most wide receivers do not make good interior linemen and vice versa. And kickers and punters are generally not exceptional at anything other than kicking and punting. The key, then, to a great football team (and any organization) is realizing what your needs are and drafting (or hiring) different persons who fit those needs. Do you remember the scene from Leatherheads[i] where Dodge, played by George Clooney, attempts to find the right role for each of his teammates? His kicker is a huge man, and when his kickoff goes sideways directly into the crowd, and his field goal attempt goes directly into the rear of the lineman in front of him, Dodge realizes his more natural position might be as a blocker. Dodge moves the kicker into position and tells him to hit anyone that gets close to his quarterback. Taking Dodge’s directions literally, this giant of a man punches two rushing defensive linemen, followed by the referee who steps in to stop him. But you get the idea. Just ask Dak Prescott what it’s like to play quarterback when your All-Pro left tackle, Tyrone Smith, is out with an injury. You end up getting sacked eight times in a single game. Likewise, just ask a CEO how her workday goes when her staff is not around to handle the numerous tasks of a functioning company.

Merit is (or at least should be) rewarded. I realize some coaches have blind spots and sometimes play their favorites, even when someone on the bench is more deserving. But all sports put heavy emphasis on statistics that reflect results, so those who produce generally play more. Here is a scene from the movie, Invincible,[ii] the true story of Vince Papale, a 30 year-old bartender, who is given the chance by the Philadelphia Eagles at an open tryout and ends up making the team, even though he would be considered too old for a rookie, didn’t play college football, and played only one year in high school:

At 30 years old, Papale became the oldest rookie in the history of the NFL, and played three years for the Eagles. He was a special teams standout and voted a captain of the Eagles in 1978 (as well as “Man of the Year” due to his many charitable activities). Papale is an example of the way life should be – those who produce should get the rewards, regardless of who you know, how you look, how well you play politics, or regardless of your social or educational background. I know, I’m a foolish dreamer, but companies should be more like football teams. I have found, for example, that the best attorneys are not always graduates of the highest regarded law schools, but it is hard to convince some employers (including mine) to look at anyone who didn’t graduate from an Ivy League college or another highly rated law school.

Great things are accomplished through preparation, teamwork and hard work. Jerry Rice, generally considered the greatest wide receiver of all time and who still holds the NFL records for the most receptions, the most touchdowns, and the most receiving yards, said, “The enemy of the best is the good. If you’re always settling with what’s good, you’ll never be the best. Today I will do what others won’t so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.” First it takes preparation, both physical and mental. Good coaches know the best players are the ones that are both physically and mentally prepared. Or as the future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning once said, “Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” But football is more than just 11 guys congregating at the stadium. That group of guys must become a team by putting aside different backgrounds and especially their egos for the betterment of the team. Remember the Titans[iii] is the true story of the T.C. Williams high school (Alexandria, Virginia) football team that is racially integrated for the first time in 1971 under a federal mandate and how that team became a unifying symbol for the community as the players and their parents learn to trust and depend on each other. Here is a montage of scenes from the movie, illustrating how they ultimately became a team:

That team went undefeated, winning the state championship despite racial prejudice, school board politics, and maybe worst of all, a devastating injury to one of the team’s best players, rendering him a paraplegic for the rest of his life. Even sadder, that same player (Gerry Bertier) is killed when hit by a drunk driver ten years later, just after he had won a gold medal for the shot put in the Paralympic Games. As leaders and teammates in life, there is little we can’t accomplish if we have the same attitude and drive as the coaches and players from the T.C. Williams 1971 football team. Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz may have said it best: “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”

We compete not just against the opposition, but with ourselves. We’ve all heard the expression, “practice makes perfect,” but a friend once taught me the expression ought to be, “perfect practice, makes perfect.” We will perform as we practice, whether in sports or in life in general. In life, though, we don’t really get to practice, but how we handle the small, everyday tasks will have a major impact on how we handle the major drama in our lives. If we can learn how to do the little things effectively, the big things will take care of themselves. But in a world where we all admit nobody’s perfect, how can we ever practice perfectly? Coach Gaines in Friday Night Lights[iv] has the right idea:

In sports, we will always be able to point to someone who is faster, stronger and more athletic overall than we are. In life, we will always be able to point to someone who is smarter, better educated, and more talented than we are. If we compare ourselves to others, then, we will always end up disappointed. So instead of comparing ourselves to others, we should compare our performance against our own abilities. The question we should be asking ourselves is, did I do a given task to the best of my ability by using my best judgment and putting in the appropriate amount of time and effort? If we can say yes to that, in the final analysis, we performed perfectly.

Although winning does matter, you can’t win all the time. Unfortunately, in life there are very few participation trophies; the world’s highest rewards are reserved for winners. But even the best and brightest don’t win all the time. Not every pass is completed, not every run results in a touchdown, and tackles are sometimes missed. But maybe that’s a good thing. It is through our failures that the best lessons are learned, as we think about what went wrong and resolve not to make the same mistake again. How we react to our failures, is the measure of the type of person we are. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” There is a difference, then, in experiencing defeat and being defeated. And even when we are riding the high of success, we should remember that it can all change in an instant. Just ask Gerry Bertier from Remember the Titans. Or Joe Theismann after his leg injury ended his career. Or just recently, All-Pro quarterback Eli Manning, being benched after starting 210 consecutive regular season games and leading the New York Giants to two Super Bowl titles. Sadly, sometimes, even though we give it our all, we still come up short, as illustrated by this second clip from Friday Night Lights as the Panthers end up a yard short on the last play of the state championship game:

Sometimes we don’t get that promotion. Sometimes a deal falls apart. Sometimes the girl we think we are madly in love with chooses the other guy. If we won all the time, life would be easy. But it’s not. So the journey becomes as important as the destination. What can we learn along the way? What relationships do we foster? What memories can we log in our play book of experience? These are the important matters that can make winners of us all.

[i] Leatherheads

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, Casey Silver Productions, Smokehouse Pictures
• Director: George Clooney
• Screenwriters: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly
• Starring: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski
• Release date: April 4, 2008

[ii] Invincible

• Production Company: Walt Disney Pictures, Mayhem Pictures, Who’s Nuts Productions
• Director: Ericson Core
• Screenwriter: Brad Gann
• Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Greg Kinnear, Elizabeth Banks
• Release date: August 25, 2006

[iii] Remember the Titans

• Production Company: Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Run It Up Productions Inc., Technical Black
• Director: Boaz Yakin
• Screenwriter: Gregory Allen Howard
• Starring: Denzel Washington, Will Paton, Wood Harris
• Release date: September 29, 2000

[iv] Friday Night Lights

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, Friday Night Lights LLC
• Director: Peter Berg
• Screenwriter: David Aaron Cohen (based on the book by Buzz Bissinger)
• Starring: Billy bob Thornton, Jay Hernandez and Derek Luke
• Release date: October 8, 2004

I love family dinners. Of course I do; I love to eat. I also love my family. And this time of year is a great time for both. Some men are born lucky; others have large families. I’m one of the latter, but I also feel lucky because my family generally gets along with each other even though my wife and I have five adult children (four with spouses) and 14 grandchildren ranging in age from 17 to two. With that many people in one room (assuming we can find a room big enough), there are bound to be problems from time to time. Sometimes our discussions turn to dentistry (we have three dentists in the family who like to talk about teeth, which can lead to boredom for the rest of us), religion (with some believers and others not so much), or politics (with liberals, conservatives, and moderates all being represented).

Our first two Thanksgivings after law school graduation were two of my most memorable. At the first one, we had recently moved to Denver, and as the holiday began, so did the snow. And boy did it snow! We received over 20 inches within a 24-hour period. The roads were clogged, meaning we were essentially locked-in at home for the weekend with no Black Friday online shopping available, as Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet back then. But we loved being together, and were grateful that we had a beautiful little home to protect us. The next year (actually the day after Thanksgiving), our third son was born happy and healthy, which reminded us how miraculous life is, and amazed us at how feelings of love just kept expanding as we added another little one to our family.

But few families, including ours, can keep the fun in dysfunctional each and every time we get together. Statistics show the holidays are the peak time for family violence, emergency room visits, and crises for those struggling with mental illness (which is probably all of us to some degree). With differences in personalities and philosophies, on occasion the discussions within my normally happy family can get a bit … loud. But usually we end up agreeing to disagree, and move on. Although my family is far from perfect, and since the only food that never goes up in price is food for thought, here are a few tips that I have learned over the years from movies centered on Thanksgiving or the dinner table that might help all of us have a happier Thanksgiving:

1. Don’t set your expectations too high, either for the meal itself or for how everyone will get along. Family therapists tell us that one of the keys to family happiness is lowering expectations, for if our expectations are low, we are rarely disappointed. I’m not sure that’s always true, but it is at Thanksgiving. In short, no family is perfect. Few of us can cook like Wolfgang Puck so expect something to go wrong with the meal, or at least expect someone not to like everything on the table. For example, our family often debates whether yams should be simply baked, candied, or on the menu at all. With high expectations, we sometimes will find ourselves feeling like this mother from Home for the Holidays[i]:

So expect something to go wrong. More importantly, plan ahead on how you will react to the unexpected. If you had an unhappy experience at a prior Thanksgiving, think about what went wrong and how you might fix it this time around, or at least find something soft you can throw so no windows or furnishings get broken this Thanksgiving.

2. Don’t ask a family member to do something they are uncomfortable doing. If you have a cousin that doesn’t (or can’t) cook, don’t ask that cousin to prepare the green bean casserole (or any other dish requiring time in the kitchen). If your dinner is to be pot luck, have that cousin bring the wine or other drinks, or chips and salsa or something similar as an appetizer. Or, if a family member hasn’t been in a church for decades, don’t ask that person to lead the family prayer, unless you want it to go something like this scene from Meet the Parents[ii]:

These kind of situations may be good for a laugh, but at someone else’s expense. It is much better to keep everyone’s feelings from turning raw if we can.

3. Family dinners are a great time for family talk, but be careful of the subject matter. It might not be a good idea to ask Aunt Harriet how her diet is going (unless she’s noticeably lost weight, and then maybe you should bring it up), or why your 35-year-old cousin Bill isn’t married yet. And try to avoid those subjects that might be a trigger to some members of the family. Religion and politics are the usual suspects here. When it comes to family dynamics, I try to remember this scene from The Big Chill[iii]:

We all tend to see things from our own perspective, and others might see that perspective as manipulating or rationalizing, with each of us intending, sometimes unconsciously, to do whatever is necessary to get what we want. You know things are getting out of hand if attacks turn personal and more and more family members are joining the fray. For those situations, try to have an exit strategy. Change the subject, suggest going on a walk or try to inject some humor into the situation. If you anticipate trouble between certain family members, you might consider a different seating arrangement this year in which the potential combatants are separated and surrounded by those who tend to be family peacemakers.

4. Develop Family traditions. Whether it is playing touch football in the backyard, having ping pong or board game tournaments, or having a particular food every Thanksgiving, family traditions and rituals help sustain family happiness and strengthen family bonds. With traditions in place, each family member will know what to expect. Even if you personally are not into traditions, those traditions might be important to other family members, so ease up on them and just try to enjoy the day. We had the family tradition of going around the table and having each family member say something they were thankful for. And you couldn’t repeat something another family member had already said. This was one of the few times any of our children volunteered to go first at anything. We thought this tradition would lead to some heavy discussions about being grateful for things that really mattered. Usually, we were somewhat disappointed, as most would say the same old trite things, but at least it got everyone to think about gratitude, at least for the moment.

I recently heard one suggestion for a family tradition that I really liked. Each family member tells a story that they remember about another family member. Each family member would tell a story about the family member on that person’s right so no family member is left out and no one becomes the center of most of the conversation. Hopefully, if you try this tradition, it will go better than this family’s ride to Thanksgiving dinner in this scene from Pieces of April[iv]:

Expanding this tradition to asking older family members to tell something from their childhood might make this experience even more enriching.

5. Be grateful and focus on those who might not have a family, or at least not as great as your own. One of my favorite movies about Thanksgiving is Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which deals not so much with Thanksgiving dinner itself, but with the difficulties in just getting there. I love the last scene, which sums up better than I could the attitude, feelings and family remembrances we should have at this time of year, and which reminds us that we are all part of the same family – the human family:

During this holiday season, I hope we can say, with Henry David Thoreau, I am grateful for what I have and am. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

[i] Home for the Holidays

• Production Company: Paramount Pictures, Polygram Filmed Entertainment, Egg Pictures
• Director: Jodie Foster
• Screenwriters: W.D. Richter (based on the short story by Chris Radant)
• Starring: Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, and Robert Downey, Jr.
• Release date: November 3, 1995

[ii]Meet the Parents

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, DreamWorks, Nancy Tenenbaum Films
• Director: Jay Roach
• Screenwriters: Greg Glienna, Mary Ruth Clarke
• Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Teri Polo
• Release date: October 6, 2000

[iii]The Big Chill

• Production Company: Columbia Pictures, Carson Productions, Columbia-Delphi Productions
• Director: Lawrence Kasdan
• Screenwriters: Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek
• Starring: Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum
• Release date: September 30, 1983

[iv] Pieces of April

• Production Company: United Artists, IFC Productions, InDigEnt
• Director: Peter Hedges
• Screenwriters: Peter Hedges
• Starring: Katie Holmes, Oliver Platt, Patricia Clarkson
• Release date: October 19, 2003

If you are like me, this past month you have been trying to make sense of the senseless. When I first heard of the mass killings at the concert in Las Vegas, my first thought (after the initial shock of it all) was, what possesses a person to do such a horrible thing? The shooter must have been a terrorist, or mentally ill, or had some other depraved motivation. See, as humans, we want to believe that everything happens for a reason. Journalists and law enforcement personnel began combing the shooter’s background and associates, even flying his girlfriend back from the Philippines, to make sense of what happened. But everyone has come up empty. There was no clear motive; there was no underlying cause. In this case at least, the horrific act was just senseless. And now we grieve for the loss of at least 58 individuals that were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, not even knowing their killer. Las Vegas is now added to the other places we associate with mass shootings: Orlando, San Bernardino, Washington, D.C., Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Binghamton, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Killeen, Jacksonville, Edmond, and San Ysidro. And these are only the ones that happened in America during the last 25 years where at least ten people were killed. Despite our desires otherwise, not all things happen for a reason. As Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist, said, “After a crisis we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is incomprehensible much of the time.”

The title of this post is from one of my favorite musicals, Next to Normal. All of us have experienced loss because all of us have experienced love. But despite that heavy cost, we can’t exist without love, even though we know, regardless of the circumstances, it will ultimately end in loss. How do we handle that loss or separation? Unfortunately most of us do not do it very well. Grief is a part of life, and something we should embrace. As Rabbi Dr. Earl Grollman said, “Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

Simply said, we grieve when a connection is lost. It is often the result of a death of a loved one, but it can occur whenever we experience a change in a relationship, for example, a divorce, a good friend moving away, or even giving up the religion we grew up in.

In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross categorized grief into five stages. These have become well-accepted by psychologists and grief counselors as a general guide to the grieving process. But everyone grieves a little bit differently, so these stages are not necessarily linear; sometimes a person might experience more than one stage simultaneously or not experience a stage or two at all.

Stage One: Denial – This is the result of our attempt to try to make sense of the loss. Sometimes it comes in the form a shock, where we are so traumatized we can’t even do basic things for ourselves. Dallas Buyer’s Club[i] is the true story of Ron Woodruff, who was not LGBTQ, but who contracted HIV in 1985. Woodruff figured out how to work around the pharmaceutical industry and FDA to help AIDS patients get the medication they need. In this scene, Woodruff first learns he has contracted HIV. He doesn’t believe it for he doesn’t fit the stereotype of that time (if you are offended by F-bombs, you might want to skip this scene, although his reaction to the news is authentic):

If I were in Woodruff’s shoes, particularly back in the 80’s, I would feel the same way he does, and I’d probably spew a string of profanities, too. The news of a loss is never fun to hear, and our first reaction is generally some form of denial.

Stage Two: Anger – Life isn’t fair, and when something happens to us that demonstrates that, particularly when loss is involved, we get angry at someone, anyone, and often at God. In Rabbit Hole,[ii] a couple joins a grief support group following the death of their young son. In this scene the wife, Becca, never raises her voice, but it is clear she is not happy with God:

 Anger, though, can be a good thing, as it often helps us get back to reality and to start effectively dealing with the loss.

Stage Three: Bargaining – Often, our immediate reaction when we learn we have lost or might lose a relationship is to attempt to bargain with a higher power to prevent the loss. It is our way of trying to take control of the situation. Religious people tend to bargain more than others, and often guilt is a part of the bargaining. “If I had only been a better person,” we tell ourselves, and then we promise God to be that better person. In House of Sand and Fog,[iii] a dispute over a house spirals out of control, ultimately ending in the shooting of a young boy. In the middle of this scene, the most gut-wrenching one of the movie, Behrani bargains with his God for the life of his son:

There is much we can learn from this movie, including this great example of how we are willing to promise almost anything to turn back the clock and prevent whatever is causing our grief. Unfortunately, we can’t roll back time, and more often than not, it seems that God is not listening.

Stage Four: Depression – We think of depression as bad for us, and clinical depression generally is. But it is common for someone grieving to go through a period of depression where they have a sense of hopelessness. But it is these sad feelings that help us understand our underlying grief. In Inside Out,[iv] it is through the emotion of deep sadness that Riley is finally able to come with grips the loss of former home:

As this clip illustrates, all of our emotions are important to our overall well-being, even though while we are going through periods of sadness, we would do almost anything to put them past us.

Stage Five: Acceptance – Acceptance does not mean that we are OK with the loss; it just means that we have learned to live our lives differently. After the loss of a relationship, we are never the same, and often have to remake our lives. The grief doesn’t leave us, it just becomes somewhat easier to bear. My sister died when she was 17 and when my mother was 50. My mother died at age 100, and I don’t believe there was a single day in those 50 years my mother lived after my sister’s death that my mother didn’t think about her daughter and grieved, at least a little. Like the emotions in Inside Out, we need to experience sadness to appreciate joy. Acceptance comes when we have learned to live with all our emotions and have added (not replaced) new or strengthened existing connections.

When we are grieving, we often hear we need closure; that somehow we need to pack up our grief, stuff it in a box, and put a lid on it; that we need to move on. But what we really need to do is face our grief head-on. Embracing our emotions keeps us alive and functioning, whether we are glad, mad, sad or scared. We can’t – and shouldn’t – move on from love. Instead, grief needs to be heard. As Nina Sankovitch said it: “The only balm to the pain of losing someone we love is celebrating the life that existed before.” And how do we celebrate that life? We share stories. A previous post on this blog talked about what movies can teach us about helping others to grieve (See, We Came Over to Sit dated June 16, 2016; here’s a link: https://lifelessonsthroughfilm.com/2016/06/16/we-came-over-to-sit/ ). It is hard to know what to say to someone who has lost a love one, but one of the best things we can do is simply tell a story about that loved one and ask the grieving person for a story in return. During these sharing of stories, if your experience is like mine, you will laugh, cry, ponder, appreciate, and celebrate together.

And don’t forget to keep your sense of humor. I love this sad, but hilarious, scene from Steel Magnolias,[v] which captures all of the emotions we go through when we lose someone dear:

I close with these words of Lin-Manuel Miranda from his hit musical, Hamilton:

• And when my time is up,
• Have I done enough?
• Will they tell our story?
• Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

May we show our love for those we have lost by sharing their stories.

[i] Dallas Buyer’s Club

• Production Company: Truth Entertainment (II), Voltage Pictures, r2 films
• Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
• Screenwriters: Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack
• Starring: Matthew McConaughhey, Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto
• Release date: November 22, 2013

[ii] Rabbit Hole

• Production Company: Oylmpus Pictures, Blossom Films, Oddlot Entertainment
• Director: John Cameron Mitchell
• Screenwriter: David Lindsay-Abaire
• Starring: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest
• Release date: January 28, 2011

[iii] House of Sand and Fog

• Production Company: Dreamworks
• Director: Vadim Perelman
• Screenwriter: Vadim Perelman (based on the novel by Andre Dubus II)
• Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley and Ron Eldard
• Release date: January 9, 2004

[iv] Inside Out

• Production Company: Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures
• Directors: Peter Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen
• Screenwriters: Peter Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen
• Starring: Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black
• Release date: June 19, 2015

[v] Steel Magnolias

• Production Company: TriStar Pictures, Rastar Films
• Director: Herbert Ross
• Screenwriter: Robert Harling
• Starring: Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field
• Release date: November 22, 1989

To kneel or not to kneel, that seems to be the question a lot of people are asking themselves lately. Taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem at NFL football games was started last year by Colin Kaepernick, then of the San Francisco 49ers, as a protest of police violence against African-Americans and other minorities. From all appearances, Kaepernick’s protest has backfired, as he is now out of a job and apparently unemployable, as the Tennessee Titans recently signed Brandon Weeden over Kaepernick as its back-up quarterback, even though the mobile Kaepernick seems much better suited to run the Titans’ offense than the relatively slow of foot, pocket-passing, Weeden. But perhaps the saddest thing of all for Kaepernick is the protest he started is now about respecting the American flag and the U.S. military. Kaepernick’s original goal of focusing the public on the issue of police violence against minorities is rarely even talked about any more. Instead, we have Twitter wars and the President and Vice President of the United States protesting the protests, and the NFL and its owners trying to tiptoe around both sides.

If each of us stops and thinks for a moment, we could come up with at least a handful of social injustices or other wrongs we would change if we thought we could. But we assume we can’t change anything, and so we do nothing. And as I learned from my own recent experience, even when we do try to influence an organization or people’s mindsets, our efforts are often squashed by those in authority.

This past month I have been mentally transported back to the turbulent 60s and 70s, and the social unrest that went with those decades of my youth. It started by me watching Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s documentary, The Viet Nam War. It continued by me attending the anti-war, anti-establishment, free love musical, Hair, put on by the Dallas Theater Center. It continued further with me watching the recently released movie, The Battle of the Sexes.[i] There were plenty of protests in all three, although as history has shown, it took many years, and in some cases, lives lost, before change occurred, and some of those same battles are still being fought today.

Many movies have focused on righting wrongs and changing social injustices. While I could list dozens of these movies, in the interest of your time, here are just five favorites of mine, some new, some old, with scenes I especially enjoyed:

• Stand and Deliver[ii] – The true story of Jaime Escalante, who adopted unconventional teaching methods to help Hispanic gang members and no-hopers learn math:

• 42[iii] – The true story of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to break the color barrier of major league baseball:

• Amazing Grace[iv] – The true story of William Wilberforce’s fight against England’s parliament and public indifference to end Britain’s transatlantic slave trade:

• Erin Brockovich[v] – The true story of an unemployed single mom who became a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brought down a California power company that had been polluting a city’s water supply:

• Battle of the Sexes – The true story of the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, and the backstory of professional women tennis players’ fight for gender equality (you can stop watching after the first part, but the rest – the trailer for the movie – is quite entertaining):

Our hearts are warmed by the successful efforts of the heroes and heroines of these movies, but still we do little to change the world around us, whether it is in politics, religion, education, business or otherwise. Many of us have tried to change things by the ballot box, but as we have seen through the last several administrations, regardless of the political party, nothing of substance ever seems to get done, as politicians are too concerned with their images for their reelection campaigns to actually try to effectuate any meaningful change. The art of compromise has become a lost one, intelligent conversations of issues have become shouting matches, and those entering politics on any level with hopes of making a difference are soon frustrated and beaten-down, with little change to show for their efforts.

So how can we make a difference? With the help of these movie clips, I offer a few suggestions.

First, find a cause that you feel passionate about, in a realm small enough for you to influence. Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver did not set out to change all stereotypes of Hispanics. He focused on math (his passion), and determined to change one classroom in one school. But like ripples from a rock thrown in a pond, his influence on his students, and his students’ successes and their influences upon others, would spread over a larger area over time.

Second, use your particular talents to instigate change. Jackie Robinson in 42 let his baseball skills do his talking for him. As fellow players and fans saw his unique skills, they started to realize that race did not define a person’s ability. Granted, few of us in any area have the superior skills that Robinson had, but all of us are good at something, whether it is writing letters, organizing meetings, talking to strangers, donating time, raising money, or when all else fails, simply saying something when we see an injustice. The other beautiful thing about Jackie Robinson in 42 is, as his coaches and teammates got to know him, they began to see him as a person and not a face from a different race, which leads me to my next suggestion.

Third, help people empathize with your cause by giving them experiences with those you’re trying to help. In Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce didn’t just talk to others about the plight of African slaves, he took others to a slave ship where they could see the conditions in which the slaves were transported and, perhaps even more impactful, smell the smells of death of so many slaves that didn’t survive the journey. In my own experience, my positive feelings toward LGBTs intensified when one of my best friends came out as gay, and several daughters of good friends announced they were lesbians. It confirmed to me that regardless of sexual orientation, people are people and should be treated with love and respect and allowed to enjoy the same right and privileges the rest of us do.

Fourth, whatever you are trying to change, make sure you know as much as anyone on that subject. Research and analyze every point of view. In Erin Brockovich, Ms. Brockovich was able to out-negotiate the high-priced attorneys on the other side because she knew the facts better than anyone, and relayed those facts through real live persons. And a bit of polluted water didn’t hurt.

Fifth, sometimes you need to take a chance and be the change you want to see. Billy Jean King and her fellow women professionals did more than just bemoan the disparity in tournament prize money between men and women. They were willing to risk their livelihoods by walking away from the established system and start their own association. Instead of just complaining about the current system, they became the solution.

Someone once said, if no one is complaining about your ideas, you are either brilliant or the boss. Most of us are neither brilliant (or at least few acknowledge our brilliance) nor the boss. We are not like those good shepherds whom the sheep naturally love and will follow anywhere. Instead, most of us are like cattle herders. If we get too far out in front of the herd, the cattle scatter in all directions behind us. So to get the cattle to go where we want them to go, we must work the edges of the herd and patiently steer them in the desired direction. It is tireless work, but the rewards can be great.

Let’s all find a cause we can believe in, even if it is as simple as making our homes and neighborhoods places of love, respect and safety. Rather than just take a knee in protest, let’s be part of the solution.

[i] Battle of the Sexes

• Production Company: Cloud Eight Films, Decibel Films, Fox Searchlight Films
• Directors: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
• Screenwriter: Simon Beaufoy
• Starring: Emma Stone and Steve Carell
• Release date: September 29, 2017

[ii] Stand and Deliver

• Production Company: American Playhouse, Olmos Productions, Warner Bros.
• Director: Ramon Menendez
• Screenwriter: Ramon Memendez, Tom Musca
• Starring: Edward James Olmos, Estelle Harris, Mark Phelan
• Release date: March 13, 1988

[iii] 42

• Production Company: Warner Bros., Legendary Entertainment
• Director: Brian Helgeland
• Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
• Starring: Chadwick Boseman, T.R. Wright, Harrison Ford
• Release date: April 12, 2013

[iv] Amazing Grace

• Production Company: Bristol Bay Productions, Ingenious Film Partners, Sunflower Productions
• Director: Michael Apted
• Screenwriter: Steven Knight
• Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon
• Release date: February 23, 2007

[v] Erin Brockovich

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Jersey Films
• Director: Steven Soderbergh
• Screenwriter: Susannah Grant
• Starring: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, David Brisbin
• Release date: March 17, 2000

Spoiler Alert!! This post contains a lot of personal information about me, so if you are one that does not appreciate true confessions, this post might not be for you. It is also a little longer than usual, although most of the clips are relatively short.

Someone once said only the good die young because only the young die good. During the past two weeks I have thought a lot about getting older. I guess I should be grateful that I worry about aging, because when you stop doing that, you’re dead. It all started when my weekend was ruined by a pain in my back. I thought I might have hurt it that morning exercising, but it turned out to be a kidney stone. I went to the emergency room for strong drugs (one of God’s greatest creations), but came home with the added bonus of pneumonia. Both ailments really wiped me out. Our counter looked like a pharmacy. I had no appetite, so I ate little, but still managed to gain four pounds. How is that even possible? After several days of this, I finally announced to my wife, that if this is how I am going to feel when I’m 80, please, God, let me die when I’m 79. To add to my glumness, during my recovery, we met with our financial planner, who focused on my upcoming retirement (a good thing!), but also making sure “our affairs were in order” when death ultimately comes (a depressing thing). That same night, we went home and watched the little known movie, The Last Word,[i] on Netflix.

The basic premise of The Last Word is Harriet, a retired businesswoman, decides to write her own obituary, and seeks the help of Anne, the local newspaper’s obituary writer. It is a tense relationship at the outset, as Anne explains, “She [Harriet] puts the bitch in obituary.” In this scene from the film, Harriet tries to tell Anne how to do her job by explaining to her what makes a good obituary:

As these elements of an obituary illustrate, a dull, useless person has either never existed or has never died. I don’t read obituaries often, but when I do, they typically tick off the accomplishments of the deceased, as if each one is a necessary building block of their mansion in heaven. I guess most people feel a little like Maximus in the movie, Gladiator[ii] – that we need to somehow leave a great legacy behind us – one that will “echo through eternity”:

If I were to write my own obituary, it would simply say, “He lived a relatively long and mostly happy life in which he loved his family and friends and felt their love in return. He learned a few lessons about life, saw some beautiful things, and had plenty of interesting experiences along the way. He died with the belief (but with little help from him) that the world he left was a little better than the world he entered.”

During this obituary obsession, I thought about two of my favorite movies about death. In the original Flatliners[iii](the remake was just released), five medical students try to learn what the afterlife is like by putting themselves in near-death experiences. But instead of learning about the next life, they learn more about this life, and the traumatic experiences that shaped their lives. In this scene (which is really a collage of several scenes), one student flatlines and discovers a young boy waiting for him that he had bullied growing up:

A less intense, but still thought-provoking movie of a similar vein is Heart and Souls[iv] where people who have died find themselves on a purgatory bus, with something they must resolve on earth before they are taken to heaven. Here is a scene where a mother is able to find her son that she gave up for adoption many years ago:

A few years back an Australian nurse wrote a book entitled, The Five Top Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departed.[v] You may find the regrets surprising. Here is a link to an article about the book:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/top-5-regrets-of-the-dying_n_3640593.html

Are there things in our own lives that we regret, need to resolve or find out about before we die? I am basically satisfied with my life, but I do have a few regrets. In a rare state of vulnerability (and in an effort to avoid ghosts from the past), I am sharing with you my top five regrets of the dying and my plans for attempting to atone for those regrets:

Regret No.1: I wish I would have put more emphasis on wellness and less emphasis on right and wrong, particularly in connection with religion. Crazily, my favorite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. I mean, how many people have even read it other than the famous verses about a time for every purpose under heaven? Solomon is credited with writing both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. As I read Proverbs, everything is black and white, good and bad. But things become more nuanced for Solomon by the time he writes Ecclesiastes. Truths are now shades of gray, and tempered by experience. I wish I had had a bit more of the Ecclesiastes outlook much earlier in life. I grew up in a religion that puts an emphasis on absolute truth, and the only sure way to get into heaven. Although I have never fully believed all that my religion taught me, I went along to get along. Our kids did not always see things the same way as that religion did, and although we were more liberal than most members of the religion, it led to disagreements and in some cases mild rebellion, as we drew certain lines in the sand that our children had better not cross. In hindsight, I wish I could have been more supportive of allowing our children to find their own truth and way in the world. While I think most of our now-adult children have gotten over some of that tension of the teenage and early adult years, I know there are still some scars that have not entirely healed.

Atonement No. 1: It is never too late to apologize for sometimes being too narrow minded, and to openly discuss with others how my actions might have affected them.

Regret No. 2: I wish, career-wise, I had been able to have done more to help the world and less to make rich people richer. I think I’m a good lawyer and have had great experiences doing many very large transactions. But no matter how well I handled those deals, the bottom line (pun intended) was to make rich people and companies even richer. I wish that somehow the work I did would have translated into easing economic disparity. The gap between the top one percent (especially the top of the top one percent) and the middle and lower classes continues to widen.

Atonement No. 2: Having been fairly good at making money, I have tried to be generous with it in an effort to help others in need, particularly extended family. I have worked hard the last ten years to develop a decent charitable giving account that I will use to help others, especially those that are hungry and homeless.

Regret No. 3: I wish I had bought fewer houses and taken more family vacations. I say this one with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. But I counted the number of houses and condos I have owned or still own, and the number is 22(!) including the home I am currently building (and a few rentals). Of course, I have relocated for work six times, which added to the number. But for whatever reason, a nice home was my psychological sign of success. In hindsight, I wish we had taken more family vacations and put a little less emphasis on having a nice home. The real culprit of our lack of vacations, though, was sports. All of our kids were heavily involved in youth sports and played something all year round and we felt like the teams were counting on our kids being to all the games. That commitment didn’t leave much time for family trips. While our kids enjoyed the sports, did very well at them, and learned some important things from playing them, looking back, those sports were not nearly as important as we thought they were at the time.

Atonement No. 3: It’s never too late to spend quality time with family and friends and I still have a few more years in which to enjoy a family vacation or two together.

Regret No. 4: I wish I had maintained better contact with friends and neighbors from the past> I have kept close to a few good friends, but there have been many good friends from my past that I have not had any contact with for many years.

Atonement No. 4: I joined Facebook for the first time a couple of years ago as a start of this atonement, but there is so much more I could (and will) do to catch up with lost friends from the past.

Regret No. 5: I wish I had danced more, read more, written more and learned to play the piano. In short, I wish I had taken more time to pursue personal interests. As a kid growing up, I though it would be cool to learn how to tap dance. But that was something little boys just didn’t do back then, so I never brought up the subject with my parents. I didn’t learn to enjoy reading until years after I got married and I say how much my wife read and how much she enjoyed it. And I didn’t start writing anything other than legal documents until about 15 years ago. I doubt I ever would have been able to make writing a career in and of itself, but since starting to write, I have learned  how therapeutic it can be, at least for me.

Atonement No. 5: I look at my upcoming retirement as a time to do some of these things. Although I might never become a tap dancer, it’s not too late to take a dance lesson or learn to play an instrument. I have a list of writing projects I intend to work on, and hopefully will have a lot more time to enjoy reading. I look forward to retirement for these reasons alone.

There is never a wrong time to take a few minutes to evaluate how we are doing in life. Are we happy? Do we have strong connections with family and friends or are there new or improved connections we need to foster? Are there new interests or talents we could be developing? Are there past offenses that need to be righted? Is there someone in need that we have the power to help? I hope each of us will take a few moments and go through such an evaluation, and repeat that evaluation often.

[i] The Last Word

• Production Company: Franklin Street, Myriad Pictures and Parkside Pictures
• Director: Mark Pellington
• Screenwriter: Stuart Ross Fink
• Starring: Shirley MacLaine and Amanda Seyfield
• Release date: March 5, 2017

[ii] Gladiator

• Production Company: Dreamworks, Universal Pictures, Scott Free Productions
• Director: Ridley Scott
• Screenwriter: David Franzoni
• Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix and Connie Nielsen
• Release date: May 5, 2000

[iii] Flatliners

• Production Company: Columbia Pictures, Stonebridge Entertainment
• Director: Joel Schumacher
• Screenwriter: Peter Filardi
• Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Keven Bacon and Julia Roberts
• Release date: August 10, 1990

[iv] Heart and Souls

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, Alphaville Films, Stampede Entertainment
• Director: Ron Underwood
• Screenwriter: Gregory Hansen
• Starring: Robert Downey, Jr, Charles Grodin, Alfre Woodard
• Release date: August 13, 1993

[v] Bronnie Ware, The Five Top Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departed, copyrighted 2011, 2012.

The past two weeks have been hard ones for America (as well as Mexico and the Caribbean). We have been pounded by two monster hurricanes, and we just had the 16th anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11. I would never wish harm on anyone, but sometimes it takes a tragedy for us to realize (or remember) how resilient people can be. Whether done from survival instinct, fear or love, I am constantly amazed how ordinary people often do extraordinary things. And these past two weeks saw many examples of that.

If you are like me, you remember clearly where you were and what you were doing when you first heard the horrible news of the events of 9/11. I often still think about a fighter pilot, stationed in the Boston area, who was one of the first to be scrambled in response to the attacks on the twin towers. His job was to take out any other aircraft that might be a threat to America. He was up to the task. The only problem was the fighter had to take off before his plane could be armed. In other words, if he encountered an enemy plane (hijacked or otherwise), the only weapon he had was his own plane, which he would use as a self-guided missile to take down the enemy, thus giving up his own life to prevent the loss of many others. Fortunately, he didn’t have to make that suicide run, but he would have done it if he needed to. I wonder if I would have had the courage to do the same.

We have heard many stories about the courage of first responders: those firefighters, police and others who run toward the dangers the rest of us are fleeing from. Again, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The movie, World Trade Center,[i] pays homage to the courage and dedication of the first responders to the attacks on 9/11 – 412 of whom died in trying to rescue others. While the movie focuses on Port Authority officers, the attitude and commitment of almost all first responders are similar to what we see in this clip:

These dedicated officers didn’t really understand what had just happened, and they realized saving anyone that high up in the towers was unlikely, but they had to try, regardless of the odds or the dangers to themselves.

We have come to expect the extraordinary from our first responders and military. But extraordinary courage and commitment are not limited to them. United 93[ii] tells the story of the passengers of United Flight 93, the fourth plane that was hijacked by terrorists on 9/11. We don’t know the exact destination of this hijacked plane, but it appears to have been another target in Washington, DC, perhaps even the White House. By using their cellphones, the passengers figured out what was going on and realized their fate. Determined to stop these hijackers, the passengers decided to change the course of history beginning with these now-immortal words, “Let’s roll.” While we don’t know exactly what happened at the end of the flight, here is the filmmakers’ take on it:

Everyday people became extraordinary heroes, giving their lives so others could continue theirs. Perhaps the bravery of these passengers saved the life of that Boston pilot.

First responders continued to do extraordinary things in Houston during the rain (pun intended) of terror of Hurricane Harvey. By the end of the fifth day after Harvey hit Houston, almost 52 inches of rain had fallen. In that same period, Houston’s first responders and the Coast Guard had saved over 3,500 people and 300 animals. There were 9,100 refugees at the George R. Brown convention center. But the first responders were overwhelmed. During Harvey, 911 operators received over 700 calls a day. A normal day would rarely see more than 14. But as often happens when tragedy strikes, ordinary people stepped up. We witnessed many examples of everyday heroes in Houston, where ordinary people gave extraordinary service to their families, neighbors, and often total strangers. These ordinary people doing extraordinary things never considered race, religion, political affiliation, economic class or any other way we often categorize or label each other. I was constantly moved to tears when I learned of these simple, yet extraordinary things:

• People standing in line, city blocks long, not for water, food, shelter or other handouts, but to volunteer to help with the rescue and relief efforts.
• People breaking into song at shelters, or playing the piano in knee-deep water, to lift others’ spirits.
• Bakers, trapped in their bakery, baking over a thousand loaves of Mexican bread to donate to flood victims.
• Neighbors creating human chains to help each other through the cascading currents of the flood waters.
• The Texas and Louisiana “navies,” using their personal flat-bottom boats, personal water craft, canoes and kayaks, to rescue hundreds of those trapped by the floods. A reporter asked a boat owner, launching his boat from a freeway exit ramp, what he intended to do. “Save some lives,” he nonchalantly answered, as if driving your boat down city streets was a normal, everyday occurrence. And saving lives is what they did.

Tragedy is often the catalyst to make bad people good and good people better. Oskar Schindler was not a particularly good person before World War II. He was an opportunistic industrialist who was primarily motivated by profit. But the war somehow changed him. Through initiative and dedication, he is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. As illustrated by the movie, Schindler’s List,[iii] at the end of the war, he had only one regret:

During World War II, like Oskar Schlinder, many ordinary people did extraordinary things to help save lives, as this clip from The Zookeeper’s Wife[iv] illustrates (notice how many people are involved – people that we never hear much about if anything at all):

No one should hope for tragedy, but unfortunately it comes to all of us. It might not be a monumental hurricane or earthquake, a world war or other titanic event. But in everyone’s life, some rain must fall; we all must deal with something. How do we react when bad things happen? As Holocaust survivor, Vicktor Frankl, said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” the movie, Forrest Gump[v] taught us that shit happens. But it also taught us we can still find beauty in the middle of it, in this, my favorite scene from the movie:

There is no one more normal that Forrest Gump, but boy did he do extraordinary things. Thanks to the people of Houston, Florida, and other areas who also have done extraordinary things, and led us by their example of love and caring. My hope is that we can avoid tragedy in our lives. But being somewhat of a realist, my bigger hope is that each of us can somehow make it through the hard times we face, whether it be the loss of personal possessions, a job, or a loved one, or the loss of a “normal” life due to injury or illness. My biggest hope, though, is that we find hope, beauty and peace in the middle of our personal tragedies, and the awareness, love and concern to help others get through their own, for we never know when we might be the answer to someone else’s prayer.

[i] World Trade Center

• Production Company: Paramount Pictures, Double Feature Films, Intermedia Films
• Director: Oliver Stone
• Screenwriters: Andrea Berloff and John McLoughlin
• Starring: Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena
• Release date: August 9, 2006

[ii] United 93

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, StudioCanal, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment
• Director: Paul Greengrass
• Screenwriter: Paul Greengrass
• Starring: David Alan Basche, Olivia Thirlby and Liza Colon-Zayas
• Release date: April 28, 2006

[iii] Schindler’s List

• Production Company: Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian based on the book by Thomas Keneally
• Starring: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley
• Release date: February 4, 1994

[iv] The Zookeeper’s Wife

• Production Company: Scion Films, Czech Anglo Productions, LD Entertainment
• Director: Niki Caro
• Screenwriter: Angela Workman based on the book by Diane Ackerman
• Starring: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh and Daniel Bruhl
• Release date: April 7, 2017

[v] Forrest Gump

• Production Company: Paramount Pictures
• Director: Robert Zemeckis
• Screenwriter: Eric Roth based on the book by Winston Groom
• Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise
• Release date: July 6, 1994