no, life isn't short

a lesson from 'Magnolia'

When I was in college in the early aughts, I watched Magnolia for a class called The Art of Film. Now we couldn’t actually watch the film in the film class, because this was Baylor University — a good Baptist school — and Magnolia is, by all objective standards, decidedly not a good Baptist movie. But we were assigned the screenplay to read at home and I watched the movie as soon as I could upon finishing. (And bought the soundtrack to boot, because: Aimee Mann.)

I love many things about Magnolia — the acting, the direction, the unconventional spiritual messaging — and it’s filled with a lot of great lines, both in the script and in the music. But the one that stuck with me most came from a character on his deathbed, reflecting on his misspent life and his many regrets. “Life ain’t short,” Earl Partridge mutters during a lengthy monologue made barely intelligible by pain meds. “Life ain’t short. It’s long. It’s long, goddammit.”

I was only nineteen years old, solidly in that youthful window of time when all manner of stupid and capricious acts are justified with a shoulder shrug and a “meh, life is short.” I was only nineteen years old, but the words of an elderly cancer-ridden man felt more true than the dismissals of my peers.

I was only nineteen years old, but I understood.