How many times have you walked out of a movie?
If you’re like me, the answer is: never. I’ve endured movies spanning the merely ho-hum to the woefully awful to the totally stomach-churning. I’ve stumbled out of theaters, wondering if there’s any way to get two hours of my life back. The same applies to trudging through that novel everyone says you simply must read, or listening to the hot new artist whose voice sounds Autotuned within an inch of their life.
Must. Get. To. The. End.
I’m not sure where this need to finish what we start comes from. Maybe we’re a culture that reveres determination. Rewards grit. We definitely have FOMO, which is why I spent two hours and 12 minutes hating Everything Everywhere All At Once because it was supposed—at some point—to be the movie with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Spoiler alert: I’m firmly in the other 6%. Had I not been watching it strapped into an airplane seat, I’d like to think I would have bailed. The truth? I wouldn’t have.
“I have never regretted walking out of a movie. I have, many times, regretted not walking out of a movie,” British writer Marie Phillips said on This American Life a couple of weeks ago.
This shouldn’t have struck me as such a revelation. But it did because it’s not just about movies or books or TV or any of the other myriad ways we burn life’s most precious commodity. The episode Phillips appeared on was actually exploring whether true love happens by magic (the meet cute!) or math (it’s a numbers game—kiss enough frogs and maybe you’ll hit a princess or prince or whatever it is you’re looking for).*
Love arrives in all sorts of ways, of course, and it’s welcome no matter the route. You could be on a dozen dating apps and keeping an Excel spreadsheet. Perhaps you’re introduced to a friend of a friend. Maybe you meet someone randomly and are compelled to strike up a conversation. Just finding someone special is a gift, and people love documenting serendipity weird and wonderful. It’s only later where not finishing things comes into play; when the romantic glow has dimmed and you know—deep down—what should be done, if only you could treat it like a bad movie.
“When I see unhappy couples, I’m just like, oh my god … someone who could love you is on their own right now,” Phillips said. “If you broke up, someone that loves you could be with you, and someone who loves your husband or your wife could be with them. And just think how much happier all of you would be! And instead, there’s some poor single person on Hinge, desperately looking through the profiles, who’d be perfect for you. And you’re not on Hinge, because you’re too busy fighting with your wife.”
People lose years—decades—trudging through relationships that hover somewhere between ho-hum and miserable. And it’s not for anyone to judge: people stay together for all sorts of reasons, and we all have very different expectations of what relationships can and should bring. But it’s hard not to think that a reasonable percentage of people just don’t walk out of movies, especially their own.
“In the movies, we have leading ladies and we have the best friend,” Eli Wallach tells Kate Winslet in Nancy Meyer’s The Holiday. Winslet has fled England for Los Angeles, licking the wound of an on-again-off-again boyfriend who’s engaged to someone else. “You, I can tell, are a leading lady. But for some reason you’re behaving like the best friend.”
“You’re so right,” Winslet replies. “You’re supposed to be the leading lady of your own life!”
It’s a stretch to get life lessons from The Holiday, even for a romantic comedy tragic like me (but, I mean, Jude Law and Cameron Diaz? Come on!). But both Winslet and Diaz do indeed walk away in this movie: they consciously escape bad relationships without knowing if the grass is greener and, in true Hollywood fashion, it is.
Walk out of one movie, start watching another. Put down Infinite Jest, pick up something you like. Stop eating the disappointing meal, grab the comfort food that never fails you. Ditch the “friend” who always lets you down, embrace the ones who have your back. We’re not under any obligation to finish what we start, only to be true to ourselves and those we care for.
“Not finishing things,” Phillips said, “is one of the great joys of life.”
There’s a sentiment worth sticking around for.
* No, it makes no sense that Americans shorten “mathematics” to “math” and not “maths,” like the rest of the world. This country is weird.
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.