Meaning-full

I just finished watching the last 90 minutes of Capote.

One of my friends once told me that I'm forever searching for hidden meanings underlying movies, stories etc. "Sometimes, " he said, "Sometimes there is no hidden meaning. Sometimes it is just a story." At the time, I just sort of said, "Yeah, yeah." And yet, here I am...still mulling over the movie and thinking about what it all meant.

You know how sometimes there is a line or a moment in a movie that sticks with you and you're unable to get it out of your head afterward? There was a line in this movie that really stuck with me.

"It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front."

For some reason, it's gotten me thinking about a guy I went to high school with. He was really a bit of a jerk, honestly. He was sullen, moody and seldom had anything pleasant to say to anyone. But for some reason - he liked me. And I don't mean, to use the high school vernacular, "like-liked" me. It was like having an extra brother. We never hung out but he'd drive me to and from marching band practice (We shared a field with the college in town, so it wasn't located at the school) and every once in awhile, he'd see me walking by and engage me in conversation..."Hey, Harris. 'Sup? You goin' to [insert generic high school activity here]?"

He was a good guy, though. Had a good heart under the moodiness. I think he felt a lot of pressure from his parents to succeed and so he had some sort of self-destructive impulse to do the opposite of what they wanted. It's hard to explain in a short post. Anyway, he always hung around these three other guys who, as my father says, "weren't worth the powder it would take to blow them up." Immature, always looking for trouble and, more often than not, finding it. I could never figure out what attracted him to that group. Wherever they went, whatever mess they got into - he was along for the ride. He got kicked off out of an extra-curricular activity because once, while they were at an away competition, the group went around town vandalizing cars. I remember being so mad at him for going with them and asking him, "What were you thinking?" the next time we spoke in the hall. He gave me a sort of lop-sided smile and shrugged. I knew then that he was most likely to have some unhappiness ahead.

I went off to college and didn't think about him for several years. Then, a few years ago, I heard he was in prison. He had been arrested for manufacturing crystal meth and was serving out his sentence.

I brooded about the news for awhile but "way leads on to way" and I hadn't really thought about him since then. But now a film about Truman Capote has got me thinking back and feeling the same sort of melancholy you feel when someone makes bad choices and suffers as a result. I have no idea where he is now or what he's doing. I hope he's doing well - as I hope for everyone I've lost touch with over the years.

But after I had thought about it for awhile, I realized that brooding about past events and other people's bad choices does them no good. And it certainly won't do me any good. We can't change the past by thinking about it. It's over...that's why it's the past. It's important to remember that sometimes or we get bogged down with regret.

Charles Swindoll said it best, I think.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes."