David McElroy

I hadn’t heard from Grace for several years and her email today surprised me. She and I dated briefly, but we hadn’t stayed in touch. Her message wasn’t long — and she didn’t seem to really want anything special — but one section really struck me.

“I’m turning 31 next week and I feel so old,” she wrote. “It was hard when I turned 30 last year and I didn’t think I’d feel this way again this year, but I do. I hate feeling this old, like everybody knows I’m not young and pretty anymore. I’m not sure what I expected, but life doesn’t turn out like I thought it would.”

This was the second time in the last month that I’d heard a woman express uneasiness about celebrating a birthday. That left me thinking again about how we see youth and age and wisdom and beauty in modern culture.

Our culture has a lot of things backwards when it comes to values, but this one seems especially dangerous. Cultures used to teach their people to give value and respect to age and wisdom, but as images have come to dominate western culture, we have reversed everything.

We glorify youthful appearance in ways never known in human history — and we’re eager to write off the wisdom of those who have finally experienced enough of life to have insight and understanding.

Our warped cultural programming leaves us scared of what we see in our faces when we look into mirrors. And it leaves us yearning for the younger years of our lives — when we were the most ignorant and foolhardy.

These warped cultural values are making a lot of individuals miserable today.

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On Dec. 10, 2004, a small film crew gathered at 6:30 in the morning for the first day of shooting on a short film. It was only a three-day shoot — with some pickup shots on a fourth day — but everything was planned in detail.

For more than a year, I had struggled to take the germ of an idea and turn it into a film. I had recruited someone I knew in local video production to help me find a crew. Some of the people we recruited were fantastic and some turned out to be nightmares to work with. Some did their jobs and others were dumped along the way.

The process was really ugly at times.

I didn’t know how to write a script. I had to figure out how to structure something entirely different from what I’d ever written before. I had to trust production people who I barely knew. And I couldn’t afford to get better people (or paid actors) because I had a grand total budget of only $8,500.

The three full days of production were hard work. A lot of things didn’t go right. There were times when we hadn’t yet found the actors to stand in shots for the scenes that we were driving to a location to film at that moment. And I was always painfully conscious that I didn’t know enough about what I was doing. I got so stressed out toward the end of the first shooting day that I pulled the director of photography into a room privately and said, “I’m so stressed that I’ve forgotten what we’re about to do. Please help me here.”

But in the end, I made a modest short film that I’m proud of. It won a handful of awards and was shown at 25 film festivals in five countries. What I’ve realized lately is that the ugly creative process is just as important as the final film — and it’s time for me to open parts of my process to you.

If I’m going to be serious about changing my life — and becoming the artist I need to be — I’m going to have to show you the ugly parts of the process that I hope will create my films of the future. So here’s what I’m working on.

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As the phone call went on, I felt more and more annoyed.

I was talking Wednesday afternoon with a business associate and we were trying to solve a problem. We were both intent on resolving the issue and we both wanted the same outcome. But I found myself fuming.

In my frustration, I wanted to shout, “What’s wrong with you? Are you an idiot? Just let me handle this my way.”

I have no way of knowing what he was thinking — and we both remained professional and polite — but I could tell he was frustrated that I wouldn’t see things his way, too.

It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I could think calmly and rationally about the argument. I still wanted to blame him for not seeing things my way — since I was obviously right in my own mind — but I could be objective enough to realize what the problem was.

My friend and I approach the world with radically different assumptions about a lot of things. My assumptions seem right to me. (Of course.) I’m sure his assumptions seem right to him. What’s worse, I doubt he’s even aware of his assumptions.

And I found myself thinking — not for the first time — that most of our so-called miscommunication in personal relationships comes because each of us makes wrong assumptions about what the other person must be thinking.

So I unconsciously hold you responsible for what I assume must be in your mind. If I’m wrong — as I probably am — I might be hurt or angry at you for something you never even thought. And you might be doing the same thing to me.

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