Left on our own without stimulus or reminders, living can fall into a rut easily. Without reference points our days can appear bland and lacking the bright color engaged experience can provide.  One lesson taught to me frequently which took a long to absorb is my life is mostly what I make it out to be.  It is my choice whether I see being alive as a miracle or a burden.  It is a choice whether I choose to embellish life to its most positive aspect or diminish life to lowest possible meaning.  Where on that scale I choose to spend my days is in majority within my control.

On a lark this morning my love and I choose to watch a movie from a decade and a half ago that has been taking up space on my DVR.  Having seen a portion of it before when I decided to record it, I already knew I would probably enjoy it.  How could I not; Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando together! 

“Don Juan DeMarco” is a 1995 romantic comedy/drama set in modern times starring Depp as a man who believes himself to be Don Juan, the greatest lover in the world. In his cape, mask and typical 17th century garb DeMarco ends up being treated by Dr. Mickler, a psychiatrist (Brando’s character).  In the work to cure Depp’s character of his apparent delusion an unexpected effect on the psychiatric staff appears.  Many are inspired by DeMarco’s delusion.  The most profoundly affected is Dr. Mickler, who rekindles the romance in his complacent marriage and rediscovers life in general.  Now that the general story line has been revealed, I want to share a few wonderful pieces of dialogue from the movie spoken by Johnny Depp’s character, Don Juan DeMarco:

There are only four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love. 

Have you never met a woman who inspires you to love? Until your every sense is filled with her? You inhale her. You taste her. You… know that your heart has at last found a home. Your life begins with her, and without her it must surely end. 

Every true lover knows that the moment of greatest satisfaction comes when ecstasy is long over and he beholds before him the flower which has blossomed beneath his touch.

There are those that do not believe that a single soul born in heaven can split into twin spirits and shoot like falling stars to earth where over oceans and continents their magnetic forces will finally unite them back into one. But, how else to explain love at first sight?

By seeing beyond what is visible to the eye. Now there are those, of course, who do not share my perceptions, it is true. When I say that all…  women are dazzling beauties, they object. The nose of this one is too large; the hips of another, they are too wide; perhaps the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are… glorious, radiant, spectacular, and perfect… because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me in the way they do… because they sense that I search out the beauty that lies within until it overwhelms everything else.

If none of those lines touches or moves you I encourage you to immediately head to the nearest emergency room as most likely your heart has stopped beating.  Or else, you and your soul have fallen so out of love with each other and have become complete strangers for which I can only suggest therapy.  It’s quite alright if you don’t want to admit it to anyone that the movie dialogue touched you.  As long as you know is what matters! 

The movie, “Don Juan DeMarco”, is not “reality” based and that’s just fine with me.  Frankly sometimes I have way too much reality in my life.  Constantly there is a barrage of news about bad economic conditions, crime, pollution, political corruption, global warming and things of the sort that sow enough negativity to choke a masochist.  While I attempt to avoid what I can, and focus only on what I can help change, the whole mess drags me down sometimes.  To balance the all too real segments of life since childhood I have held on tight to what inspiration I can find from others. 

Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway, Kipling and Tolkien long before he was well known are writers who took me to grand new places and inspired me as a child.  In my adult life Thoreau, Huxley, Orwell, Vonnegut, Clarke, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Forster are among those who pushed me to see a world broader and deeper than I could have otherwise known.

Movies have had a parallel affect on me and many have served to help me see beyond my range of life experience and become enthused, contemplative and even inspired about living.  From “The Wind and the Lion” to “Gone with the Wind”, from “Groundhog Day” to “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, from “Love Me Tender” to “Love Story”, they all left a  mark within me.  And now on my list is “Don Juan DeMarco”, a movie about inspired love that comes at a time when wondrous and unexpected love has come into my life.  I am grateful to know beyond a shadow of a doubt I would rather live delusionally inspired than realistically dull and bland.  For that small grain of wisdom my gratitude is too tremendous to even try to state.  

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Albert Einstein