About Life as Running
Post 674:
A movie came out recently called The Peanut Butter Falcon. It wasn’t the widest release, I guess, for whatever reason. Someone who decides things decided that should be. Anyway, besides being utterly heartwarming without coming off mawkish or maudlin, it’s a great story example of the journey or quest. In this case, our protagonists are literally on the run. We’ve all read or seen a ton of journey stories, and many of them share the obvious; the main characters are going from one place to another in a state of high stress or duress. Maybe there’s a time crunch. Dark forces approach from behind. Uncertainty and pitfalls lie ahead. Most likely there’s an academic classification for what I’m talking about, but I think I slept through my Lit classes in college under the false assumption that I was going to be a doctor. Whoops. Not a doctor. Sorry to those that reared me. Your scion is totally not a doctor.
Getting back to the film, let me say this again so it’s out of the way and unequivocal. It’s great. If I told you the impetus behind the quest, it might seem ridiculous, but that’s the magic of storytelling. Any premise or goal can be compelling if written well. All about the delivery, bro. So besides being very much its own thing, it also falls more or less into that classic tale of folks on the run. The Journey.
Running stories seem basic in an outline; on the other hand, they have the ability to pretty much encapsulate life. I know it seems we’re all mostly just sitting around right now, but that’s not really true. We’re running for something. Running from something. We might be running behind or ahead or on schedule, but… you get the picture.
Why do people keep making these types of stories? My guess, it’s hard not to get behind a character or group of characters trying to go from one place to another, odds be damned, because it’s hardwired into our nature to do the very same thing. Maybe in our own lives we’re not trundling along to get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean or whatever, but maybe we’re trying to ascend from poor to rich or from weird to normal or sad to satisfied. Almost everything’s a journey. Probably why stories like The Odyssey or Lord of the Rings are so timeless and poignant. By the way, there’s a whole thing about the Hero’s Journey, but I’m not exactly talking about that, though there’s tons of overlap. Pretty sure there’s like a graph that maps out all the beats to the Hero’s Journey, and I have a fear of graphs and charts.
When it’s all said and done and the credits roll, my brain forces me to ask a little bit deeper question: Why are stories on the run such a big deal to us? I can only speculate, being a non-doctor. Perhaps it’s the inherent restlessness of the human spirit. Perhaps we’re all emotional sharks, unable to stop moving. Could be that we like an inspirational reminder to get our shiz going. Maybe we just like to see things move. Because otherwise, boring!
Run for it. Cheers and see you after.
