We all know the age old saying, “the drowning man will always try to drag someone down with him”, and the 2016 film Passengers… Wow, 2016? Has it really been five years since I watched that movie in theaters? Man. How the time flies…
*Ahem*. I digress…
If you’ve seen Passengers, you should be familiar with the choice that the would-be protagonist Jim Preston made. It set the course for the rest of the film, and towards the end one of the others characters says of Jim, “the drowning man will always try to drag someone down with him. It ain’t right, but the man’s drowning.”
So what do we do when we feel like we are isolated, sinking deep, drowning? Our hand is outstretched, we’ve been pushed to our limit and feel as though the whole world is crumbling down right on top of us? Worse still, no one seems to notice or care or understand just how much we are hurting? What, then? Do we lash out, shut down, grow as cold as the dark that envelops us? Cling to the hand that reaches out to rescue us and drag it down into the deep with us?
I think that most of us do this without even realizing it. I’m certainly guilty of that particular transgression. More often than not, I shut myself down, lock my thoughts inside my head until all I know is the cold dark of loneliness and despair, despite being surrounded by those who care deeply for me. But recently, hope has begun to break through, brought on by the love of those closest to me. I used to cite faith alone as the answer, but that has only caused my burden to grow heavier (that is a whole blog post in and of itself, so I will focus on the topic at hand…)
Hope and love, I am learning, can serve as keys to unlocking the chains that hold us back and drag us down. Sharing our hurt, the worst parts of ourselves with those we know we can truly and deeply, intimately trust. Allowing them inside the walls we so carefully keep built up around our hearts and minds, and maybe even handing them a sledgehammer once they’ve passed through those barriers. Maybe with honesty, time and immersing ourselves in the company of those souls most kindred to our own, we can find a way out of the deep, away from the dark and into something… Beautiful.
Copyright © 2021 D.M. Kurtz
D.M. Kurtz 