We Live in a Cynical World …

            I was watching “Jerry Maguire,” the Tom Cruise romantic-comedy about a sports agent who dares write a manifesto of what, ideally, his job should be. He loses his job, all  but one client, and then goes about trying to find himself and his future all the while jeopardizing the love of the one person who believes in him.

            “We live in a cynical would,” he tells her when he realizes none of it matters if you don’t have that one person to share it with. Cynicism, fatalism, defeatism, racism, you name an ism and it’s alive and well in here. And it’s easy to give up, to dwell on the loss, the shitty condition your life is in – usually by your own hand.

            “Jerry Maguire” is a movie, I remind myself. But at least in a movie there’s a predictable ending, an ending you may not see, but when it hits you smile, maybe choke up, and think, “they got it right.”

            I’ve been thinking of Tom’s soliloquy (I know, he’s not saying the lines to himself, but to Rene Zellweger) and I can’t help but think he was on to something.  The world is a cynical, f’d up place and yet, in the midst of it, you can “get” it.  Maybe Neil Young said it better:

            I want to live

            I want to give

            I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold

            It’s these expressions I never give

            That keep my searchin for a heart of gold.

We live in a cynical world.  I know that better than most.  Maybe it’s syrupy and simple, but I felt more positive and hopeful after hearing Jerry.  After all, that’s all it takes – a little hope.