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Softer Stones

My students hosted a movie night this evening. We watched Up. It's makers pushed the idea that leaving your past behind, as hard as that can be, can lead to new life. An old man who had lost his wife did all he could to hold onto his house, which symbolized his last connection to her. He stubbornly refuses to move from that home, despite a city's efforts to take it and redevelop the land. His heart is so set against moving and losing the last memories of his wife that he chooses to take his house airborne by attaching thousands of helium balloons so he can move the entire place to a scenic waterfall. In the end, he lets that house go-- literally-- to help a young boy rescue a rare "snipe" which would otherwise have been in captivity the rest of its life.

The movie shows just how far we will go to maintain our familiarity, sometimes even if that familiarity is painful, and even if the alternative is obviously healthier and more life-giving. In the story, the old man would never have changed had he not been faced with a choice between holding onto that old lifestyle-- alone-- and letting it go for the sake of another. Letting his home go at first brought him a sense of real loss, and like us many times, he wasn't able to see past that darkness. He couldn't, at the time, see the life he was about to experience.

Often, it takes the wisdom and goading of other people to help you take steps like these. Sometimes these other people are friends, sometimes foes; but whatever their shape, their effect in you is to act as a catalyst to change. This, to me, ranks among the most important reasons for community.

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