(CAUTION! This post may contain spoilers of a movie you haven’t seen. If you don’t want to waste your $10, proceed with caution. You’ve been warned.)
While my eldest son was at summer camp, his mother and I took our remaining progeny to see Toy Story 3. We have been fans of the franchise since before we had children, so this was a natural activity. We always expect a great movie, and we were not disappointed.
What we did not expect was for the film to be as deeply moving and emotionally provocative as it was. This always happens to me at kids’ movies.
I won’t go into the plot or the story (in an attempt to prevent a complete ruination of the experience for those of you who have not seen the movie, but wish to in the future), but there is a scene which, among all the other significant scenes, which had a huge existential effect on me, which is no surprise, given my history with existential crises.
The Toys–Woody, Buzz, and the Gang–have, through their adventures, found themselves at the trash dump. In an epic setting of biblical and Dante-an proportions, the toys have found themselves on the cusp of annihilation at the mercies of the trash incinerator. Think Gehenna meets the Gaping Maw of Hell. The Gang has exhausted all of their wisdom, shrewdness, skills, uniqueness, and wherewithal to escape, but has come up short. They are past the event horizon and now face no future but certain death.
Understanding they have no way of escape, and realizing their common fate, the Toys surrender, look into one another’s eyes and hold each other’s hands in a final muster of strength to face the End, to die together as friends and with dignity.
It is at this point a married, 37 year-old man with four children breaks down in the theater watching a kids’ movie.
I’ve spoke of loneliness before. But isn’t that what we all want and need–a friend? To not face life, then death, alone?
After all the advances of humanity, after all the technology and all the burying of our heads, we all still die. As if life is not hard enough, you then die. Most of us will die alone. Of all the sufferings of humanity, it is made all the more horrible by enduring it alone. It ends up being that Hell is not in the fire or the darkness, but in being alone to face the fire and the darkness.
The question, then, is are we alone? Will someone come along side you in your suffering and hold your hand through it all? I don’t care what your beliefs are, this is the common human quandary. No one wants to be alone. Most of us are willing to suffer whatever may befall us, so long as we have a companion to go with us.
This brings up so many other questions of theology, philosophy, sociology, religion and life; far too many for this small space. No matter what you believe about god, I have only one suggestion:
Take someone’s hand, or offer your hand to another. It will make tomorrow easier to take than today.
