Between a rock and a hard place

Last night TW (whom we will henceforth refer to as SW--Super Wife) and I watched the movie 127 hours. Actually, we watched the last half of it. Even before all of this, we didn't have the time to watch whole movies all in one night. Anyway, several moments in this film touched us deeply.

It's about an experienced climber and hiker--Aron Ralston--who is a bit of a lone wolf (a character who is sooo Colorado: he loves Phish, apparently works at a bike shop, lives for the great outdoors). He literally finds himself between a rock and a hard place, as he falls and lodges his arm between a boulder and a canyon (more like a crevice) wall.

The scenes of him trapped in this very narrow canyon are harrowing. In the first hours after becoming trapped he hits, slams and pulls against the boulder with everything he has. James Franco plays this part with such immediacy. Spit and mucus fly as he rams himself against this rock. Over the next 127 hours he plots his survival and his eventual escape. Between episodes of intense mental and physical effort he reflects, dreams, and hallucinates over his life: his relationships, his family, his lost opportunities.

Several days in, as he battles dehydration, blood loss, and fatigue, he comes to a realization that his own character flaws--namely selfishness and fear of vulnerability and connection--led him directly to this moment. He looks around at what would be almost certainly his grave and says, "You know, I’ve been thinking. Everything is… just comes together. It’s me. I chose this. I chose all this. This rock… this rock has been waiting for me my entire life. It’s entire life, ever since it was a bit of meteorite a million, billion years ago. In space. It’s been waiting, to come here. Right, right here. I’ve been moving towards it my entire life. The minute I was born, every breath that I’ve taken, every action has been leading me to this crack on the Earth's surface."

There's a lot here for me to chew on. In what sense do we chose our most difficult battles? And I don't mean in the sense that we could have chosen otherwise and avoided them. For Aron Ralston, there is a very banal sense in which he chose that situation--he set off hiking alone without telling anyone where he was going. He was probably hiking dangerously (I wouldn't know the difference, though). He chose to step on that boulder that gave way.

But Ralston is saying more than this. He is saying that his whole life led up to that point in a coherent way, and that the boulder and canyon and his crushed arm are all intimately connected, not antagonistically opposed. I think that this is a really powerful way for me to think about our present circumstances. It is obviously not the case that any of us chose SBs cancer or that our personal shortcomings caused this. No, that's the simplest and shallowest way to interpret the above quote. Instead, I think that the quote suggests that when we look around at our present circumstances and see how all parts can be fitted together, we can see the resources present and within us that will help us through. Aaron saw that boulder and that canyon as a part of him, as deeply constitutive of his whole existence. When I think of all that we are going through not as something foreign and hostile but as part of a greater whole, I see new and different metaphors for our situation emerge. Our battles become dances, our armies become intimate partners, and our misfortune becomes a rich symphony.

This probably makes no sense. I'm not sure I can properly explain the resonance I feel between our situation and the story of this film. I do know that I feel this resonance strongest when I think of the moment immediately after Aron cuts his arm off and comes loose from the canyon wall. After recovering from the shock, he gathers his gear and bandages his arm. As he walks away, he turns and looks at the boulder and says, "Thank you."

What was he thankful for? He was not thankful to the boulder for freeing him. The boulder never budged and in fact sank deeper into his arm and the canyon wall when Aron attempted to chip away at it. No, he was thankful that the boulder showed him something he could never know otherwise.

In my best moments, I am also thankful for our boulder. It scares me to no end. And I wish to the universe that it was my brainstem that was covered in cancerous cells. But I know that, at least so far, our boulder has opened up new worlds to us.

If we can leave this canyon all together then I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will all look back and say, from the deepest parts of us, "Thank you."