I found a note in my Topics file from way back in 2109 called “Barbara Nicolosi Quoted.” She’s a screenwriter I’ve been following for many years, and I have to say she’s kind of a hero of mine. Her very short story: she was discerning to be a nun but felt called to go to Hollywood and try out that screenwriting thing. What came of it is basically a ministry teaching Christians how to make legitimately good art instead of sappy propaganda. As you might guess, she’s very quotable.
One of the quotes in that file is this:
“At what point does character become your fate?”
She said this in a class at Regent University, I believe. A student recorded a lot of her gems. I wasn’t there, but I’d bet the quote is in the context of screenwriting, character development, etc. Nonetheless, as a standalone question, it’s compelling.
It’s unnerving, actually. Especially for a 48-year-old guy who’s trying to rebuild amidst the ashes of his life - a life spent in a house he didn’t even know was burning down around him.
In my job, I spend a lot of time around younger people who are basically just getting started out in life (the pay sure reflects that). New marriages, first cars they bought with their own money, new discoveries that old guys like me think are dead-obvious… It’s a non-stop reminder that we live on a timeline with a finite beginning and end, and I’m somewhere past the middle of it.
My wife helpfully reminded me of this not too long ago. It was in the midst of a demoralizing job search. I was receiving rejection after rejection. She said, “It’s hard for a middle-aged man to switch careers.”
I remember the shock of it: Middle age? I wasn’t middle-aged, I was…Oh, dear Lord. That explains the hair loss and heavy breathing at the top of staircases!
It was comical, but in the way clowns burn to death. Hilarious, sure, but tragic. Mmm, yes, tragic.
It hit me that all the times I’d kicked some big decisions to had arrived. “I’ll get around to it” was very nearly becoming “I didn’t do it.” Character was becoming fate, and I did not, I do not like the fate materializing before my eyes.
Oh, it’s not that bad or dramatic. And my character flaws don’t quite have the damnable purity of the truly lost, but regardless of my culpability for getting here, it’s up to me to course correct. I’m still breathing, which means there’s hope. The gallows “concentrate the mind wonderfully.”
In fact, while I wish I’d been forced to face some things much, much earlier, I’m doing it now, and the result has become glorious, life-giving freedom. I do envy those who seem to “get it” much earlier in life, but I’ll take it now - with gratitude.
I was kicking all of this around yesterday when I visited a convenience store to liberate some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. There was a man speaking “Chinese” to the clerk, and despite my best efforts, I got roped into a conversation with him. Long story short: he called himself Jean Robert Leleux, (pronounced “John Ro-bear Lay-lou,”), and he was an internationally renowned sword master who had traveled the world teaching theater troupes how to wield a blade. His name, he told me, meant something like “Wolf of the World,” or at least the region of France where he met his tragically beautiful and and long-gone wife.
Leleux was tanned, deeply wrinkled, and wore glittering accessories he said he believed were “Hopi,” and would I like to hear some Hopi war chants?
I did, although he was clearly off his meds. And while he sang his Hopi war chants, I couldn’t help but wonder about the character that led to this fate - singing to strangers, earnestly telling them that he was “One of the cool ones you definitely want to know.” Had he reached his revelatory moment and failed to, well, “rise above” it?
“At what point does character become your fate?” I’m not exactly sure, but I thank God we have the chance to change it before we’re singing to strangers on the sidewalk outside of a Sinclair gas station.
Love.