![Man running in front of a poster - scene from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Man running in front of a poster - scene from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F58fd24dd-9def-48af-a515-b6315889b964_480x387.jpeg)
I begin almost every one of these posts with an image from a movie, and I use that movie as a motif/metaphor/lodestar for my writing. This week I’m doubling back to last week’s motif — I’ve some unfinished business with Walter Mitty.
In the opening scene of the movie, in his somewhat drab apartment, Walter is reading the online dating profile of the character who will become his muse, Cheryl Melhoff. In it, Cheryl suggests she is seeking someone who is ‘Adventurous, brave and creative (or employed)’. The brackets seem important. This juxtaposition between freedom and the security of a salaried job sets Walter’s aspirations for a more liberated life.
Connecting
Dreaming of adventure
I decided to re-watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty again last the weekend. At it’s core is a relatable tale of unfulfilled potential — one originally written as a short story by James Thurber, published by The New Yorker in 1939. Ben Stiller and John Goldwyn turned it into an epic adventure of self-discovery:
There are two pivotal scenes in the movie that stand out for me. In the first, Walter’s sister finds an unused navy blue JanSport backpack he’d bought years earlier to see Europe when he was a teenager, but he never went.
I once bought a navy blue backpack — a Berghaus one. I was in my early 20s. I’d just finished my engineering apprenticeship, and had met this seemingly awesome yet elusive guy, who was just a couple of years older than me and had grown up in the next town over, but was brimming with so much more vitality than anyone I’d ever met.
He was just back from Kenya, and shared epic tales of travelling thousands of miles on a shoestring, hitching rides on the back of trucks and hanging out with people who’d changed his outlook on life. And he was already planning his next adventure — India, I think. It sounded to me like he was living the dream!
Listening to him, I felt like I too could live out my dreams. He offered me a glimpse into a different more adventurous life to the one I’d known until then, not unlike Sean O’Connell did for Walter Mitty. Like Sean, he didn’t tell me I should see Kenya, he showed it to me. I imagined the possibilities, bought the Lonely Planet guide and ventured a couple of towns over to where the nearest proper outfitters was. Buying the backpack made Kenya feel so much more real to me. But, like Walter, I didn’t go.
Curating
Feeling brave
In the second pivotal scene in the movie — its turning point — Walter Mitty sees that backpack again. The next thing we know, he’s in the mountains on his way to find Sean and change his life forever.
That’s not how things played out for me though. Let’s just say it took me a while…
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