David McElroy

It’s a staple of science fiction for a robot to dutifully obey its programming and keep performing the task it was given long after its designers are dead and the task is useless.

One of the most emotionally satisfying tales of this sort is Pixar’s 2008 film “WALL•E.” For 700 years, this little robot has been alone on Earth cleaning up the trash humans left behind when they left the planet. It’s a useless job at this point, but it’s the job he’s been given, so that’s what he does — day after day and year after year.

WALL•E’s human creators are long gone but he doesn’t question what he’s been programmed to do. Over the centuries, though, he develops curiosity and something in him finds the awareness that something isn’t quite right.

WALL•E realizes he’s lonely — something his programmers never prepared him to deal with. When another robot finally shows up on the planet, he falls in love. That love for another robot gives him the incentive to go beyond his programming — to find ways to fill a need he didn’t know he had — but it requires him to give up the task he had been mindlessly doing for all those years in order to pursue Eve instead.

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I was about to leave Chick-fil-A Wednesday evening when I noticed a young woman come in who looked exhausted — as though she had been battling monsters all day.

She was tall and slim, with straight black hair and dark brown skin. She wore black pants and a tailored solid blue shirt that fit her frame tastefully.

Even though she seemed tired, she looked graceful and elegant. She looked lovely. We met one another near the door and spoke politely as we passed.

Then as she stood at the counter waiting for someone to take her order, I quickly went over and spoke.

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As I read aloud from the book, I could tell that my girlfriend was increasingly upset by what she was listening to. It was nearly a decade ago and my then-girlfriend and I had been learning more about ourselves by working our way through a personality system called ANSIR. I was reading a section of a book which discussed a long-term pairing of her type and my type.

“Then we don’t have any chance, do we?” she said with tears in her eyes once I finished.

I was at a stage in our relationship when I thought we probably should split up. For me, the book was just pointing out obvious problems between us that needed work. In a way, I was letting this book guide us toward the breakup that I thought I wanted and that I thought was right.

I’ve been thinking about that conversation lately and about a lot of the discussions she and I had during that period. Was I right in believing that our personality differences were driving our problems? Was she right in concluding we had no chance because of what the book said about our core differences?

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