You and I Are Way Too Old to Believe We Have No More Movies Left in Us

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

A young actress makes a point about what’s the point

Dear Reader: I am well aware that options to live a different life are, in some ways, not available for many due to disability or depleted bank accounts. Where you live and your culture also affect these choices. That said, all of us have the option to change our minds, which, I am wont to repeat, is life’s greatest adventure. Wherever you are on your journey, that is always available.

Her name is lost to history, at least to my brain. The interview was on an early morning show, my last jaunt to the Coast with my new pupper Mika before I headed out for my first river rafting trip this June. It’s a return to adventure after a couple of rough years getting my body ready for play again.

The actress is still young, maybe in her thirties. In Hollywood, even for great beauties, women have a use-by date (please pardon the awful pun).

Careers are short, especially if a woman doesn’t age well, or isn’t a good enough actress to command work her entire life.

Most actresses aren’t Judy Dench, Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren. That’s rarefied air.

I remember nothing particularly notable about the interview. Just this comment, made in passing:

I only have so many movies in me. I want to make them good ones.

The average Hollywood movie takes up to three months to film. While you could legitimately argue that these days there are all kinds of other programs and specials and series that can extend an actor’s life, let’s just go with movies for the sake of this article. They’re big stories worth telling well.

When they’re riveting, movies (Other People’s Movies or OPM) change our lives. Inspire, challenge, even move us to become something more than we ever imagined we could be. Sure has been that way for me.

Art has inspired lots of changes and risks in my life, to move me to go make my own highlight reel.

I love the idea that are lives are made up of movies, some long, some short, some incredibly dynamic, some straight out of the mind of John Carpenter and others tragic. Some are downright heroic.

Quite a few, like A River Runs Through It, are long, quiet, gorgeous tone poems which don’t involve tons of action. The action is subtle, powerful, an undercurrent to the waters of our lives which move endlessly, until they stop.

Lots of folks moved to Montana after seeing that movie. It was filmed in the gorgeous Montana summer, natch. Those who moved there without bothering to check out Boseman in winter rued the decision but that’s another movie, isn’t it?

We often miss the movies where we’re heroic. That’s a tragedy, because we have the right to own when we wear the cape every so often. We all do, but can fail to credit ourselves.

When do our movies stop?

When we shut down production.

When at some level, we’ve yelled “CUT,” which meant the end of living in full.

This morning my buddy JC said something that really got my attention:

“We spend so much time convincing ourselves that we’re too old and need to slow down that when great opportunities come along late in life, we’ve talked ourselves right out of them.”

JC will be 42 this August. I’ve got thirty years on him. A slew of my movies have already run, many of which have played out long ago. Some were doozies, some complete and utter flops. But they were my movies. There are lots and lots of stories still to tell, too.

This year I’ve started some new movies- a return to adventure, rescuing a dog, living in a place I love that puts me close to the Coast every week…all kinds of brand-new stories, some of which will end sooner than others.

Unless there’s a surprise ending I can’t see coming. Happens to a lot of heroes.. Sometimes heroes and heroines die young.

Sometimes real heroes get sick young and end up changing the world, like the extraordinary Stephen Hawking.

From Wikipedia:

In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He died in 2018 at the age of 76, having lived more than 50 years following his diagnosis of motor neurone disease. (author bolded)

Hawking’s greatest movies happened after he lost his speech, his ability to move. He used one cheek muscle to communicate.

Perhaps one question to ask is how much are we living right now vs putting that big thing off, that thing we always wanted to try or do. Sometimes Hollywood kills off our heroine early. Happens in life.

Are we living richly right now, so that if indeed that should occur in our own life highlight reel, we feel we have truly lived? Are we living as though there will always be another day-week-month-year?

One texting teenager can change all that forever. One heart attack, one brain aneurysm.

And if our lives are on hold for a while, as mine has been for about two years or so from surgeries and repairs, are you ready to launch your next feature film?

You can be emotionally ready, but not able. You can also be able, but not emotionally ready.

You and I want to be, as best we can, ready and able. Because as much as life drops turds in our punchbowls, it also drops the most amazing second, third and more chances to do something amazing with your life.

Are you ready? Is your body able for the next movie?

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

To me, life is a series of movies that we get to live, end some, start new ones, continue the ongoing documentaries like being a parent, a sibling, a friend, a child.

It only ends when we shut down production, sit in our recliners or on our couches or in our beds and watch OPMs for the rest of our days.

That’s just waiting to die.

Too many people in that place right now. Too many of us have put ourselves in that condition from lifestyle choices or just by choice.

For others, life has sideswiped us, but our response to that is also a movie.

But just waiting to die?

For those who’d prefer not to go out that way, here’s a clip to watch.

To honor the recently-deceased Donald Sutherland, I just re-watched Space Cowboys. One of my favorite scenes speaks eloquently on to how to live.

In this scene, Hawk, played by Tommy Lee Jones, has just learned he has inoperable cancer.

As he discusses the magnificent Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird sitting on the tarmac, listen to what he says about where it belongs. It’s a statement as true of us as it is any high-performance aircraft:

In the movie, Hawk screams out a hero, lands on the moon, saves the world and realizes a lifelong dream in the process. Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to go out. Life offers us so very many ways to do something just as remarkable but in our inimitable way.

Clint Eastwood directed this movie about old guys in space. Eastwood is the living, breathing example of exactly what I’m addressing here. At 94, he’s been in at least 60 movies, and still hasn’t stopped. He’s directed more than thirty, so far.

I love the so far part of that sentence. Research his diet and exercise habits. He might have money and trainers and chefs, but he still has to do the work.

Are we willing to take care of ourselves so that the time we have left to us, no matter how old we are, is full of experiences worth having? Can we make ourselves both ready and able when life lobs something amazing our way?

Life doesn’t stop as we age. We stop choosing to live as we age.

Are we willing to launch another movie, maybe a comeback tale, if we’ve let ourselves go? If life or our choices have left us with a body that isn’t aging well?

I know people who have done just that very late in life (

Penny Nelson

) That’s a hero’s journey if there ever was one. Here’s another example.

I’m not exhorting you to head to the gym. I’m just asking: if our bodies have begun to let us down (more truthfully, it’s all too often the other way around), are you and I are willing to do what it takes to enjoy a comeback story, one that lasts to the day we die?

You and I were born with everything we needed to be well and active our entire lives. We were designed to go Mach 10 until we run out of fuel, the way Hawk went out. We were born to be athletes.

Zak at a posing practice

I’ve interviewed people who were born with severe cerebral palsy and still turned themselves into competitive body builders. That’s a heroic movie all right. Zak, above, started life in leg braces, with a walker, wearing a helmet.

He was told to expect to live his whole life that way.

These days he’s a happily married father. When he walks you can barely tell there’s something neurological going on. He wins over able-bodied men.

But that’s Zak’s movie. He sure inspired me.

What’s your next story, worthy of your own big screen?

What that looks like is unique to you. For some of us that’s reading every book we can get our hands on. For others it’s raising grandkids. Still others, it’s creative work of some kind.

For crazy people like me, it’s often pushing the limit in some way looking for that next adrenaline high.

The movie doesn’t matter. Only that you’re still making them.

This is how it looks to me,

Kristi Keller

- here’s that quote you were trying to find:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” — Hunter S. Thompson

The best part of being the lead actor in your own life, plus the director and producer and financier of your own films, is that the reels aren’t over until you stop shouting

ACTION!!!!

I was back out on the river, in the wild, doing just that for five days. I have three more trips this year so far, and am just getting revved back up. Lots of my movies tend to be action-packed. But that appeals to me, not to everyone.

One ongoing documentary will be my love affair with my pupper Mika:

This is MY bed. What do you want?

Unlike Hollywood, especially as it relates to the ingenue, our movies aren’t over by the time we get the first crow’s feet. There’s an endless supply of potential titles still left to you and me. Comedy, tragedy (inevitable), rom-com, who knows?

What’s the next move, the next movie in your life? You may not want to be Tom Cruise in Maverick, albeit that’s more possible than you may think (stay tuned, stories to come). But you can spin a new tale, any time.

Let’s play.

The author in a meditative moment on the mighty Rogue River, Oregon.

As always thanks for joining me today. I hope this article inspired you. Every time I write about what’s possible I check my inner storyteller and ask what story I WANT to tell next with my life. What fun! I hope it was for you. If so please consider supporting my work:

If you know someone who has sundowned way too soon and may need a bit of a boost please consider

Either way, please play today.