I watched "A Man Called Otto" last night.
In some ways it was a tough movie to watch. The main character, Otto, wrestles with suicidal ideations and attempts suicide several times in the movie. If you are someone who struggles with mental health, I encourage you to watch the movie with someone who cares about you. But there was also a lot of hope in the movie. Hope if we will spot it. And receive it. Otto is wrestling with a lot of emotions. Grief and anger the two strongest. Only he's wrestling with them alone. And to make sure he gets to keep wrestling with them alone, he pushes every human being in his life as far away from him as possible. Most of those people come to simply dismiss Otto as a grumpy old man. Everyone but Marisol. The neighbor who moves in across the street. She almost immediately begins to sense that Otto has a hard story living beneath his hard exterior. In a turning point in the movie - and in Otto's life - Marisol confronts Otto. It was a tough love moment that didn't look like some of the traditional ways we go about offering tough love. Otto asked Marisol if he could borrow her phone. He'd disconnected all of his utilities and services in advance of his planned suicide. Only Marisol told him no. She told him he couldn't borrow her phone. She said he couldn't borrow it because he wouldn't tell her why he needed it. He wouldn't tell her why he disconnected his phone. He wouldn't tell her why he wouldn't let her in the house when she was worried about him. He wouldn't tell her why she has to be worried sick about what he's going to do to himself behind the closed doors of his house. She's telling him all of this while sobbing. And as she does, you can see Otto's grump exterior begin to melt away. Then Otto tells her everything. He tells her about his anger and about his grief. He lets it all go. Marisol hands him her phone. In many ways she hands him life; Otto never again considers taking his. It was a beautiful gift she gave him, pulling back the grumpy disguise he was wearing to protect his grumpy secrets. Marisol helped Otto discover something we all need help discovering. Grumpy people aren't grumpy people because they are grumpy people. They are often grumpy people because they are hurting people. Grumpy on the outside often looks like losing your unborn baby in a bus crash on the inside. Grumpy on the outside often looks like losing the love of your life to cancer on the inside. But we never know that inside if we settle for what we believe about the outside. Sometimes tough love is crying with someone and letting them know I can no longer handle this grumpy on the outside while knowing beyond a doubt it's holding hostage an unbearable pain on the inside. Too often we are offended by grumpy. We are driven away by it. Marisol wasn't. Marisol put off being upset by Otto's grumpy long enough to wonder who the man was beneath the grumpy. Marisol understood we can't judge someone and offer them healing at the same time. It just doesn't work. Maybe the most beautiful outcome of this story, in the end, wasn't what Marisol gave to Otto, it's what Otto would ultimately give to Marisol. It's how it often works, this life thing. When we set out to bring healing to someone else, we often find ourselves the most healed. But it always starts with curiosity. Always.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
February 2025
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