As good as it gets

July 15, 2019

Greetings from This,

Melvin Udall says: “What if this is as good as it gets?”

He is in a psychiatrist’s waiting room, it is a sad tableau, surrounded by people who are as broken as he, all wondering where their hope will be.  Melvin says this out loud to be spiteful, because he is an atrocious person, which is his version of brokenness.

He also says it because part of him is terrified that his reality is as good as it will ever be.

I can remember moments, celebrating with friends, or cresting a mountain range and being changed by the seemingly endless horizon, or holding my daughter for the first time, and thinking; “This is as good as it gets.”

Melvin Udall and I are both right and wrong.

‘This’ is the life we are given.  Mountaintop experiences and miracles and the love of others, and frustration and disappointment and heartbreak and grief.  Time, in its beneficence, prevents it all from happening at once, but it is all in our lives.   

Jack Nicholson played Melvin Udall in ‘As Good as It Gets’ twenty plus years ago, so I’m not sure why the quote came to me now.  Like all of us, I walk through the spectrum of experience, including the days when it’s easy to feel the good and the times when I wonder how good could exist.  This week was no different, but I was reminded of my part in the spectrum.  And somewhere in the mist of sleep and wake, I heard Melvin ask his question.

I have felt frustrated and empowered and exhausted and exhilarated and disillusioned and inspired and content and unsettled.  Other than a few details to react to, my view of things all happened in the same life that existed for others around me who responded differently.  The same ‘This’.

Melvin Udall asked the question “What if this is as good as it gets?” practically daring the universe to show him the answer.  He desperately needed to know it could be better.  And it was.  The only thing that changed was him.  Not the terror, not crime, not politics, not ‘Those People’.  Not the economy or the weather or his hairline or the gifts God gave him.

To be fair, it was a romantic comedy, and so let’s keep that in perspective.  But ultimately what fractured Melvin’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic, neurotic reaction to ‘This’ was love.  The same love that existed all along.  When he finally understood it.

It is a companion lesson in the movie, one worth noting.  When I see life is unfair, when people disappoint, when the bagel burns and the barista is rude and the traffic snarls and tempers flare, the healthiest response is love.  Seems terribly simple and too easy to call trite, and no one has a better answer.  This response is best for me, and it turns out, for the people I run into.  And it feeds the thoughts I need to really understand my place in ‘This’.

In any given week I am shown the incredible beauty and immense challenges of the world we live in.  I see the hope and potential in the three year old boy.  I see the brilliance of the morning light, a gift from the east where every day waits to be filled.  I feel love, explode in laughter, press myself to my fullest potential, reach out to help others, find faith in small miracles.  And I am slain by the smallness of people, discouraged by my own failures, cringe from my own gifts, retreat from the greatness in each God-created second because I lack the imagination and courage to seize it.  Is this as good as it gets? 

The answer is yes, this is as good as it gets.  The other question remains; Is this as good as I get?

Hope this finds you gooder,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith