Atonement; it's what you do

The movie selection of the evening was Atonement. I have seen it a few times before and every time I am struck by it. I can never pinpoint precisely what is so striking about it. The technical aspects are remarkable yes, but it isn't the technical qualities that pierce through people. They help to effectively accomplish said piercing, but they couldn't accomplish anything if there wasn't such humanity about it; such honesty.

 I suppose it is that quality that most entrances me. It is honest. That we all make choices that can't be undone. Even at 12 before we realize anything we do can matter we do matter. During the film someone commented about how Briony will likely be haunted by the mangled image of these soilders, and I said, "I think she's already haunted, what's a few more ghosts?" It came across as a dark joke, as many of my offhanded confessions do.

I, like Briony, made choices as early as 12 that haunt me. You try to forgive yourself for what a child could have no way of knowing, for a future you could have never predicted, but it doesn't work like that.

I am a woman of many ghosts. Of things I actively decided to do and for so many passive things I let leave. For so many critical words I never had the courage to say.

I know I can spend a lifetime writing them down, perhaps even rewriting them, as Briony did, to provide an ending real life did not. However I think honesty pays a better tribute.

I have knowingly let time, at it's most limited, pass by myself and a terminal loved one.
I'm doing it again now.
I should be with my Grandfather. Or at least write more.
I should have spent as much time as I could have with him
I should have better selected the people I love.
I should have recognized the limits of those I love...
These are a few of my ghosts.

Only a few.

While the movie and book are fictitious there are millions out there like me who are honestly haunted by the choices we made before we realized it mattered. Things we can never get back or give back. We will spend a lifetime trying to forgive ourselves. Atoning for the nature of people.

That's what it all comes back to doesn't it? The best works of art, the most acclaimed movies, the classics in literature. They stand out in their honest reflection of the human condition. In particular the most painful parts of humanity; suffering, intentionality, heartbreak, hope, desperation, and despair. The parts we so often try to ignore and forget in favor of the better aspect; love. Ironically though it is that one feature of humans; to love, that so masterfully connects all the painful parts in a symphony of life. If we faced those difficult truths more often would their be less war, less pain, less sorrow? Would we at least be more compassionate to each other? Would it matter?

It seems poetic, the way it all interweaves, and promising that such works of art exist like this film or Frida Kahlo's paintings. That though astonishingly few people do document the full scale of humanity in all it's splendors and accompanying splinters, some do. Works exist to bare witness to all that it means to be human.

Perhaps one day I'll be one such person...