Film hurts when I hear, ‘I’ve seen what we can be like together’

By David McElroy · August 29, 2019

I shouldn’t watch “The Family Man.” For me, it’s too powerful — and some of it hurts too much.

I haven’t seen this movie for about five years, but I came across a copy tonight. I wasn’t planning to watch it, but, somehow, I watched a few minutes. Then a few more. And then I couldn’t turn away. In some metaphorical way, I saw too much of myself in Jack.

Even more than that, though, I knew what he felt like — after he found himself transformed against his will — to know what his future could look like if he pursued love instead of selfishness.

And I know what it feels like to see Kate and to know she’s slipping away — to chase her and to beg her to have faith in a crazy dream. I know what he feels like when he delivers the sales pitch of his life standing in the middle of an airport: “I know we could both go on with our lives, and we’d both be fine. But I’ve seen what we can be like together.”

And that line crushes my heart each time I hear it, because I’m terrified Kate will get onto that plane anyway.

My story doesn’t really fit Jack’s life. The story of my love doesn’t match the movie story. But when I look at it with squinted eyes — and look at it more like an impressionist watercolor than like a realistic picture — I can see truth from my own life.

When I was younger, I was driven to succeed. I was cocky and confident, probably arrogant. I was good at what I did. I expected to run the world. I wanted success and I tasted it at times.

Jack is more successful than I’ve ever been. He’s more of a cocky jerk than I’ve ever been. He heartlessly used people in ways I never have.

But there’s no denying that I once thought I had everything I needed. Jack tells the angel in the film that he has everything he needs. But I was humbled in ways that still terrify me. I lost my money. I lost my success. And I ended up alone.

I found out that I had nothing I really needed. The things which hurt to lose weren’t the money and success — because those are the easiest to replace.

During his “glimpse,” Jack ended up without any of the success he had known. He worked a job which he thought was beneath him. He became a nobody. But he had powerful love and a couple of beautiful children. Before the dream was over, he realized what he had really needed all along.

The movie asks us to answer some important questions.

What if you made different choices?

What if you said yes instead of no?

What if you got a second chance?

I can’t get these questions out of my mind lately. I know better than to think I can go back 10 years or 20 years. The past is the past. It can’t be changed. But imagining the outcome of different choices then can help me make better choices today.

This past January, I shared with you my surprise (and horror) when I discovered that my Kate didn’t brush me off as I had remembered her doing. It turned out that I had foolishly failed to pursue an opening which she gave me. I won’t rehash the whole thing here.

But what if I had made a different choice then? What if I had pursued her? What if I had said yes to the opportunity she gave me? How could life be different today?

And that’s the point. I do see how things would be. I see now “what we can be like together.” I can’t go back to that point, but I see vividly, in living color. I was once blind, but now I see.

What if I got a second chance? Everything would be different.

I see a clear vision of what that life would be. It wouldn’t be perfect. I’m not perfect. She’s flawed. There would be obstacles. But if you know what you can be together, would that matter? Should it matter?

For me, this movie really starts at the end. When Kate finally decides not to get onto the plane — to sit with Jack and talk instead — that is the first scene in the rest of their lives.

Everything that has come before — all the heartache and pain and rejection and even loneliness — become irrelevant. The entire movie is prologue to the lives we know they are going to live together. And I feel as though all of the struggle I’ve gone through will be the same — if there is a second chance.

I shouldn’t watch this movie.

I love it too much. It hurts too much. It means too much. And I want that scene at the end too much.

I know what we could be like together, but it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know that — doesn’t see it, doesn’t want it, doesn’t believe it’s worth it.

Because if she doesn’t believe in my crazy dream, she gets onto that plane — and I’m sitting in that airport lounge all alone instead.

Share on Social Networks

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

Related Posts