kurtiss.org | giving is receiving

I just listened to Elvis Mitchell’s interview with Andrew Wagner, regarding his new film, Starting Out in the Evening. Elvis asserts that the piece is largely concerned with its character’s conflicting selves–the portrayed and the perceived. Andrew’s response is simple and affirming to those of us who find ourselves in life’s midday, sauntering or sprinting through the intersections to which we open ourselves. He has this to say about, what he calls, “the very event of living:”

[It’s] this act of contrasting needs. We are pulled in many directions. And we are pulled by our need to individuate, we are pulled by our need to get along in the world, we are pulled by the need to self-sustain, to find comfort in closeness. But to grow our capacity to succeed in any of these, we are also asked to open. We are also asked to meet intimacy in a brave and fearless way.

And jumping in to the void, as this experience may be felt in our early years, is frightening. And the question of our 30s and 40s is: how far afield have we gone acting out our fear of intimacy, acting out our fear of what life has really called us to do, which is to sit still in the truth of our lives so all of these needs may line up in the same person?