Years ago on a flight home from a business trip I happened upon the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. Not my usual kind of pick, it is kind of a magical realism meets the apocalypse, and it unexpectedly knocked my skeptical-of-such-films socks off. Not because of the storyline—although it is a captivating one—but because of one particular scene out of the whole movie. I remember pausing it at that point just to take in what I had witnessed on screen. I had to absorb all that was conveyed in that one moment, and what it could mean for my/your/our lives out in the real world.
As I remember the movie, Hushpuppy, the six-year old girl at the center of the story, is being chased by aurochs, ancient beasts that have been let loose when the polar ice caps suddenly melt. Unlike actual aurochs, a species of wild cattle, they are menacing, huge, and relentless. Hushpuppy, on a perilous journey in a catastrophic world, can’t shake the beasts no matter how far or how fast she runs. She tries to get away from them and, again, as I remember it, their catching up with and overcoming her always feels imminent. She simply cannot get away from them. What is a six-year old girl, running from relentless beasts to do?
She stops running.
Hushpuppy stops running, turns around, plants her feet, and faces them, come what may. The beasts, huge and terrifying, do the most unexpected thing. They stop their pursuit. They take her in. One of them kneels and bows to her. She looks them straight in the eye, and calls them “friends-kind of”. No longer the menacing beasts that she feared, but exhausted messengers waiting for her to stop so that she could face what she had feared, find her courage, and get on with completing the errand upon which she had been sent. The beasts turn around and disappear into the distance.That is the moment. That is when the brilliant and potentially life-changing wisdom—for me— of this one small scene in a very big film became clear. Imagine how life might be different if we simply stopped running away from whatever it is we fear.
It takes so much more effort and so much more energy to run away from our fears than it does to stop, turn around, plant our feet, look them in the eye, and call them for what they are. Friends. Kind of. Not menacing beast but exhausted messengers, they aren’t going to stop chasing us until we stop running.
If six-year old Hushpuppy can do it, so can we.
Our two-year old Val facing the goose.