Being Awed Beats Being Entertained

​I went to see the movie Westside Story yesterday. It's not like I'd been counting the minutes until the movie came out or anything. It was a dreary Friday afternoon. I'd grown tired of working and sitting around in a home office. So I decided to go see a movie.

I get my fill of 'invaders from another world' movies with the boys, and since I didn't have them with me, I seized the opportunity to take in something a little more 'this' world.

Before I go on, I'll tell you this isn't a movie review. All I'll say is I forked out twenty bucks to watch this on the IMAX screen. It's the best twenty bucks I've spent in a long time. Including the six gallons of gas I bought yesterday morning 🤷‍♂️.

Here is what I am going to say, though. I think I went into the movie thinking I was just going to sit in the dark and not have to think about anything, but the reality is my mind never stopped racing. That can happen when you go in expecting to be entertained, and you end up being awed.

Westside Story is a musical. This movie is 2 1/2 hours of beginning to end singing and dancing. Now, I can't sing. And I can't dance. So I'm sure that fed my awe of people doing both in ways that were as other worldly as any of the marvel movies I watch with the boys. So I know there is that.

But I found myself looking into the eyes of the women spinning in and out of dance moves I would have thought impossible to navigate. I listened for the hearts in the men hitting notes as they sang I'm not sure I've heard hit in songs before. I found myself thinking - they were born to do this.

I found myself thinking about the person who was born to teach them to sing. Teach them to dance. I thought about the person who was born to write the opportunity for them to showcase it all. I thought about the person who was born to put the music with the dancing, the dancers with the dancers, and all of it with the story.

As I allowed my mind to trace the history and the web of the talent on that screen - I was awed.

Of course, you can't sit and watch a production full of people doing what they were born to do without wondering - what am I born to do. And am I doing it?

Towards the end of the movie, one of the characters is in a particularly moving scene singing the song, Somewhere. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she sang the words:

Someday, somewhere
We'll find a new way of living
We'll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere

It was in those tears that I saw someone who wasn't an actress, but someone who was doing what she was born to do - someone who had found her somewhere.

It was in those tears at the end of the movie when I started to think about the idea that knowing if we're doing what we're born to do isn't answered by the thing we're doing - it's answered by the tears - or the laughter - or the heart.

No thing will ever tell us, this is what I was born to do. But our hearts will. Our hearts will tell us when we've found our thing - our somewhere.

I encourage you - if you go see this one - look in the eyes of the singers and the dancers. Explore their hearts. And maybe for a minute, you'll find yourself exploring your own.