Face your fears, or live in regret

"It's a lot easier to run away from the problem than it is to face it head on and take a chance on gettin' hurt. But in the end all you're left with is emptiness, and regret."
~ Barry Corbin in Born Wild

Well yesterday I decided I needed a movie to clear my head. I picked a random movie that I hadn't seen before...at least I thought it was random. I know now that God directed me to watch this movie for the message it delivered. It's called Born Wild from 2013. It looks like it was one of those straight to DVD type deals and I only gave it a chance because I saw that Kix Brooks was in it. Very weird to see a country music superstar as a villain by the way. Anyway, it's a very intense character study about the effects of running from your problems, and the consequences that come with it.

The story is about a character named CJ Jennings, a former member of an underground biker gang who has just been released from prison for murdering a fellow member of the gang. That part of the story dies very early on as it not a very important factor in the overall plot. Basically, we find out that CJ left his hometown of Banshee, Texas twenty years ago, leaving behind a young girlfriend, and all of the familiar that he apparently didn't want. Instead of sticking with the simple life, he decided to run and find something new.

So he returned to find his mother dead, his bestfriend dying, his former girlfriend now divorced from the afore mentioned Kix Brooks, and a son he never knew he had. This movie kind of dragged for a little bit, and I was really wondering where it was going to go...and then it started to take shape. CJ was a drifter. He ran away from his life and decided to go be a bad boy, joining a dangerous biker gang and ending up getting involved with all of the wrong people, and as a result he paid the price with a prison sentence.

The quotes I included are spoken by his father. They reunite after about 40 years of not seeing each other. As we learn in this scene, CJ's father was a runner too, leaving him and his mother when they were young, blaming all of his issues on the war, and instead deciding to find his comforts at the bottom of a bottle. They reconnect over time and it is quite serene to watch. These quotes stuck with me immediately. They are what made me realize that this movie was not so random and within seconds, I had the material for my next blog. The Lord sure does work in mysterious ways.

This movie was actually very, very good, and it really helped me in understanding some personal issues. I've been a runner quite a few times in my life. I ran away from my home in Riverside when I was 17, and set off a chain of events that led my father to drop me off in Tucson just a few months later. I ran away again from my sister's house not even a year later, and ultimately ended up almost homeless in Tucson. Nobody, on their 18th birthday, should get the reality check that I did, but I brought it on my self. I paid the price for trying to run from my problems by hitting  rock-bottom.

Over the years I've run from several other situations. I've run from jobs, probably because I momentarily just didn't like something my boss said, and instead of facing it, I burned a bridge that could never be repaired. I've run from relationships, for various reasons. If a situation isn't working, I tend to flee. I honestly don't know if any of it is from my mother dying when I was younger, or it is just the result of some faulty wiring in my brain, but I know that I have in fact done more than my fair share of self-sabotage, and in some cases I have paid dearly for it.

Ultimately, I have learned a major lesson recently. I have been putting way to much pressure on myself to be the absolute best I can be. I want to be the bread winner, but I'm no good as a provider or a husband if I can't get a handle of my own mentality. I have to give things time. I must learn to live in the moment instead of worrying so much about the long term outcome. Nobody knows what the future will bring, that's the mystery of life. You can't waste your life in worry, and you damn sure can't run from your problems. If you don't face your fears, all you'll have is regret.

"You don't have to be a great man, a good provider, be a good husband or a father...you just have to BE THERE."

Battling Inner Demons

"He who makes a beast of himself, loses the pain of being a man."
~ Laurence Fishburne in Standoff

Well sorry kids, I've been out for a couple of weeks. I did write a blog post last week, but for personal reasons, I decided to keep it private. But alas, here we are, back at it. I was able to sit down last night and watch a new little gem called Standoff. An absolutely phenomenal character study about the battle with personal demons. It actually worked out very well that I just saw this movie, because I myself am dealing with some personal demons of my own right now, and this one made me think on a very deep level. See lately I have not been dealing with the move all that well. At first it was what I believe was homesickness, but then it turned into a little bit of self-sabotage. On some level, I feel that maybe I have been fighting myself on my attempts to settle in here. Jobs have fallen through, which also doesn't help. It gets discouraging, but in the end I know better.

So about the movie, Standoff. It stars Laurence Fishburne as an assassin with the same ole "all dressed in black" cliché, but this time there's another not so often used touch. He wears a black beanie over his head to keep his victims from seeing his face. If he chooses to, he removes the mask just so it guarantees that the mark is going down anyway, simply for the fact that they've seen his face and it can't be risked that they can identify him later. Anyway, the movie begins with this assassin doing a job which included shooting up a funeral. Never fun to watch, but that was how the director wanted it. So, as it turns out, a little girl just happens to roam into the cemetery with a camera and catches multiple pictures of the assassin, which he then notices and chases her to a nearby house. This is where the true nature of this story begins to unfold.

At this point we meet Carter Greene, a military veteran played by the amazing Thomas Jane, who is dealing the loss of a close family member and is slowly killing himself. It is called Standoff because once the killer gets into Greene's house looking for the child, it becomes a battle of wits, between the two men. For a while, the assassin either doesn't take his mask off, or hides behind a corner, making sure that Greene doesn't see his face. At this point you see that the assassin is battling inner demons, because he is not just "going in for the kill" as the saying goes. He is actually giving this man a chance to "do the right thing" and hand over the girl so that the assassin can tie up a loose end. This movie, remarkably enough, did not drag as I thought it would, despite the fact that the action started right up with very little character development in the beginning.

Over the course of the hour and twenty-two minute movie, the director brilliantly tells the story of two men and a child, all three alone in the world, and all three brought together to somehow find inner peace through an incredibly traumatic situation. Though the dialogue is incredibly profane, some of the best quotes that I have heard in a long time are found in this movie. As you have already noticed, the two best ones are at the beginning and end of this post. You actually get to see a wretched, cold-blooded and ruthless assassin, start to question his own existence, and it is just amazing to watch. I did not expect this movie to be what it was. I just thought, "Oh cool, Laurence Fishburne is going to be a villain! And this movie is going to have a lot of action!" But the director throws a brilliant curve ball, making this one of the best character studies I have ever seen.

I could so easily go on, but eventually I would end up telling the whole story, and if any of you decide to give the movie a try, then I don't want to spoil it for you. Let's just say that I truly believe that God purposefully pointed me to this movie last night, because He knew that its message would be pivotal in my growth as I push forward in this new endeavor. Whether you are a cold-blooded assassin, or just a normal everyday Joe Schmuckatella, the battle is real. Inner demons will tear at your heart strings, and they will destroy your sanity if you let them. If you lower your defenses, and you let the red guy with the horns down below see your inner most fears, you will find yourself fighting a battle that is very difficult to win. The best that anyone can do is to take life one day at a time, and don't let fear or anger rule.

"You don't see the Devil's face without taking the ride to the bottom."

~ Laurence Fishburne in Standoff