Let’s talk about Covid-19 for a second.
Or wait, let’s not. Not yet. Instead let’s talk about how the movie About Time isn’t a masterpiece. Heck, check back with me in a month or two and maybe I won’t even think it’s good. I mean, first of all, Richard Curtis directed it. Richard Curtis is the guy who directed Love, Actually, which you might think is a good thing, but it’s not because that movie is terrible. I’ve just lost some of you. I can feel it. Let’s move on.
About Time is a 2013 movie starring General Hux from Star War and Rachel McAdams. General Hux from Star War can travel backward through time. I really don’t want to get bogged down in the plot of all this stuff, so here’s a link explaining things. Anyway, you think this is a movie about General Hux from Star War and Rachel McAdams falling in love, and it’s kinda that, but it’s also about the bond between a father and son, and not taking life for granted, and if that sounds sappy then you’re not ready for the kicker which is that Ben Folds’ The Luckiest both opens and closes the film so yeah, sappy doesn’t do justice to the level of Grade A Canadian molasses Curtis is throwing on this movie. This movie is, objectively, a 2 1/2 star film.
Except it’s not, because Covid-19 is being a real jerk right now and locking us all inside, and time has become a flat circle and I have no idea what day it is, and if you watch the movie About Time during all this than it objectively gets 19 out of 19 coronas.
Here’s when the movie, like a virus, dodged my immunity to cheesy films and got me right in the heart. General Hux has learned the best way to use his time travel powers is to live every day, just like normal, and then go back in time and live that same day over again, only this time letting go of all the stress, busyness, preoccupation, ingratitude, and general blerginess that disrupts day to day life. The point is “what if you could live each day and just really be in the moment?” Or as my wife put it, what if time wasn’t a finite resource?
Which, you know, if you’re a follower of Jesus, it’s not. To quote my boy John Donne, “death be not proud,” because death, you donne (see what I did there?) got your butt kicked. Or to reference my other boy, Clive Staples, we are all eternal beings. There are no “mere humans.”
Which means we don’t have to stress about, say, how we’re going to make it through Covid-19 without losing our minds, or resent another day trapped inside with our kids and nothing to do, or even whether we’re financially going to be okay, or numb ourselves from the existential crisis with binging alcohol or Netflix or whatever else.
It means we are free to love our spouse, knowing time is infinite, and that the real question before us is “did I appreciate the miracle of love, of existence, of how while writing these words I just took a few more breaths while getting to talk with the TENS of you who are reading this?”
It means rather than stressing about our future, we can celebrate a chance to spend time together as a family, cherishing these fleeting moments we’ll never get back.
And yeah, that probably sounds pretty cheesy, like a Richard Curtis movie, but what if, you know, it’s true?
What if we have infinite amounts of time, even now, in the middle of Covid-19, and the only things worth focusing on are to whom we gave love, and how generously we gave it.
