Projects

I've been thinking a lot about Noah, Ryan Gosling's character from The Notebook.  And not just because of this.

Though it is excellent.

For those of you who haven't seen the movie (?!?), Noah and Allie (Rachel McAdams) meet and fall in love one summer when they're 17. They want to be together forever but her family is rich and his is poor and her evil mother separates them. After Allie leaves, Noah enlists and fights in WWII. Then he comes home and has to figure out what to do with his life.

What he does is take all his pain and suffering and channels it into one big project, building Allie her dream house. He gets it all right: the porch, the room for painting, the trim. And then? He's done. And he's still got all these feelings. Lucky for him, Rachel McAdams sees his picture in the paper, faints, and then runs into his open arms. Feelings solved!

The thing is: what about when you embark on a project no one can solve for you? Sure, he's got his own emotional work to do to forgive her, but a lot of his problems are solved when she decides to stay with him. I'm thinking about the kind of projects we embark on within ourselves, the kind that you can't always take a picture of for the paper.

Maybe some day somebody will come along who can/will help me with my project. Maybe I'm not thinking of all the possibilities, I accept that entirely. But right now I feel like I'm Noah looking around at my half built house, knowing I have to finish it to get out of the driving down rain, but also knowing Allie has moved far far away and is never ever coming back.