An old friend was back in town for a few weeks and we spent two whole days together doing girl stuff–movies, shopping, lunching…and talking about relationships. We were talking about some very specific difficult days that are long past for both of us now but how we see them now from such a distance.
She reminded me of one of my favorite movies, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, and what is my favorite scene. In it, Indy’s father is dying and the only way to save him is to retrieve the Holy Grail from its hiding spot. Life, salvalation, redemption, great stuff…all are on the other side of this incredible chasm. There’s not way to jump across it, so he’s stuck on the side of disaster and misery, looking across the chasm at the good stuff and unable to get to it or even imagine being able to get to it. The only thing he can do is take a leap of faith.
My friend and I remembered those terrible times when we were at the chasm, all alone, and wanted…NEEDED…so badly to cross but could not. Stepping out into thin air was the scariest thing in the world. So scary that we stayed in misery for far too long. We were so afraid of losing everything that we risked losing ourselves…and everything, in the long run…by staying in limbo too long. But we ageed that in our separate situations, once we’d taken that leap of faith that everything would be okay and made that first step, the path began to materialize and we found our ground again. We found a way forward to a much better life and much happier times. Even if the path was virgin territory and we were a little unsure-footed, nothing after that leap of faith was a horrible as we felt right before we took it.
Being in limbo, being at the edge of that chasm, is an awful feeling, but you cannot stay there forever. Eventually, you have to resign yourself to misery or you have to take a chance on being happy.
Here’s the YouTube clip of my favorite scene:
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