Going the distance

Happy Tuesday! 

This past Friday, I was looking for some cinematic comfort food and watched Rocky for the first time in a decade or so.  Unlike so many movies, Rocky has aged well–the brutish maleness of most of the characters still marks them as losers, while Rocky’s innocent desire to show that he can stay the course just once still feels like an honorable way for him to redeem a life so many of the other characters tell him he has wasted.  

I’ve always been struck by the film’s decision to have Rocky lose–he knows he’ll lose and does it anyway; having proved his mettle, he wants only Adrian, who is the true measure of what he is: kind, loving, and wise enough to know the best person in the neighborhood, even while everyone else says Adrian is unintelligent (and worse). 

We should all hope for such internal compasses; very few of us are world champs–every one of us can strive to go the distance and then return from our adventure to those whose love we work to deserve.