On Being Engaged

I realize that English is a non-context free grammar, so I will try to be clear what I mean by engaged through the context of my post.

I saw I Will See You In My Dreams this past Friday. If you haven't seen it, Blyth Danner does a great job and Sam Elliot gets a cameo also. The story line is Carol (Blyth Danner) is a songstress/widow living in LA 20 years after the death of her husband. She is completely satisfied with her daily routine of breakfast, paper, bridge, golf, dinner, sleep, until the death of her dog and the appearance of a mouse shake up her world. She enlists the pool man (Martin Starr) in a failed attempt to find the rodent, but it turns out that the pool boy has musical yearnings of his own. Suddenly, the urgings of the pool man to go out for karaoke, the appearance of Bill (Sam Elliot), a new retire, and the return of Carol's daughter (Malin Akerman), force Carol's re-engagement with the world, with song, and with romance.

Many times we decide that life is too painful to live outside our comfort zone. We have a circle of friends that keep us comfortable, that make us feel safe. Maybe we had a parent that got angry with us when we were young, or didn't hold us when we were crying. So we grew up feeling scared to commit, afraid to become engaged, afraid to depend on others. Or maybe we had that one perfect partner and life took them away from us, and now we are afraid of trying again, afraid that, like Carol, if we try again with Bill, he will also get taken away. Because nothing in life comes with a guarantee.

But of course in trying to seek a guarantee of forever, which we will never get, because none of us live for forever, we give up the beauty of today.

There are all sorts of what ifs that keep us from becoming engaged. Too Young, too old, too fat, too thin, too rich, too poor, too smart, too dumb. When I applied to Notre Dame as a Freshman, we had to submit a photograph with our application. When we arrived, there was a book waiting for us with a summary of our high school "careers". It was supposed to help us "network". Everyone called it the dog book. Such is the cruelty of young people. But that same cruelty is ingrained in our psyche, and leads to the regular dishonesty rampant in online dating today. So who would want to become engaged, all things considered.

For those of you who don't want to pay the tenspot to find out what happens to Carol, or wait for Netflix, I'll tell you that I hope to be like Carol, shocked out of my complacency, taking a chance on engagement, taking a chance on romance, and finding someone, even if it only lasts a few moments (yup, Bill dies too), getting another dog, singing again, getting back out in the world, getting out of my comfort zone, and taking care of...me. Becoming engaged again.