People who know me know that I spend a lot of time analyzing things (maybe way too much time) and so it was after Anita’s death. A million things came into my mind and one of the stranger ones was a pair of movies: Bye Bye Love (Paul Riser) about three single dads and how they try to get their lives on track; and Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s classic western about a retired killer who comes out of retirement for one more job.
About a week later, I went looking for the movies on DVD. Bye Bye Love is not easy to find but Unforgiven was. However it was not until last week that I sat down to watch it.
William Munny (Eastwood) is a single father whose wife has died. Now he finds himself raising two kids and working a pig farm. As the movie unfolds, we find that Munny has “given up wickedness” because of his wife’s virtue and his love for her. Even after her death, he continues to be exactly the type of man she would expect him to be. He refuses to drink alcohol – even when he is freezing and wet from rain and getting sick – and he wont “go into town” to be with other women nor take “free ones” from the prostitutes offering the bounty.
Certainly, William Munny is not a character we want to base our lives on – he does agree to kill for money and ends up drinking again and killing in cold blood. However, taken by itself, there is an element of holding yourself to a high standard and not succumbing to the Devil’s temptations that can be emulated.
One thing that struck me was how difficult it seemed for Munny to deny himself these things. Being poor, working a pig farm, raising two kids by himself – these are just the life challenges he faced, not to mention the breaking of his old bad habits (alcohol, sex, killing).
I am sure I am not the only one who finds it hard to live in this consumption driven society yet to deny myself anything. In fact, advertisers – heck, our whole economy! – wants us to indulge ourselves. Consumer spending is the barometer we use to measure our country’s economic health. Pursuit of happiness is a constitutional right and for generations we have been chasing a life “just to be happy”.
I would never deny anyone happiness, but often the way we pursue it is opposite of denial of self. I have personally spent gobs of money on all manner of things yet felt no happier the next day. I still find it extremly difficult to self-deny. This is a character trait that I must continue to work on. God asks us to be good stewards of what he’s given us. That doesn’t mean never spending but spending wisely. He asks us to exhibit self-control, and that goes for all areas of our lives (including, for me, eating better and exercising, not losing my temper with my kids and keeping my house tidy).
So for the time being, I will look to William Munny (but not the killer) as one inspiration for self-denial and strength to overcome the hard times.
