I’ve always loved movies. For me, they transport me to a completely different world. Just as some people lose themselves in music or sports, I love myself in the landscapes created by movies and story lines. The internal messages within movies have always been extremely easy for me to see-- I’ve always just gotten what they were trying to tell me. I know this isn’t the case for some or even most movie-goers; many times when people watch movies it’s for pure entertainment value. But when I was younger, I decided that I wanted to tell stories and make people feel what I did when I watched movies. It became my goal to shape other people’s perspectives and open their mind to a new way of viewing the world or even one specific topic.
In spite of having this goal set in my mind, I was never really sure about what or whose story I wanted to tell. Many different types of movies have been a heavy influence on what I hope to aim for: The Lovely Bones, Forest Gump, Wall-E, Up, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and many more. However, it wasn’t until early 2014 that I discovered how a simple story about no one of real consequence could transform daydreams into a crazy reality.
This article is about the revelations I had while watching my favorite movie of all time: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. For those of you who have seen this movie, you may not agree completely with all of my analyses of it, or you might not have thought about it at all. However, my goal in writing this article is hopefully to show you what the effects of a great story can be, and to expand your thought process when gaining messages from various forms of story telling.
Before I go on, I’d like to give a brief synopsis of the movie just so you understand the story I’m working off of. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty follows the story of a man in his late thirties or early forties, who works for Life magazine. As a the negative assets manager (the person who develops all of the photographs that go into the magazine), he’s worked with an extremely famous photographer, Sean O’Connell, for many years. As Life magazine begins to undergo a huge transition from being a print magazine to operating almost entirely online, Walter is tasked with the development of the final photographs to be put in the last print version of the magazine. However, the Sean O’Connell image that was meant to be the cover photo appears to be missing. The rest of the story follows Walter’s journey to locate Sean and the missing negative; this journey of the perpetual daydreamer is all at once unbelievable and full of simple moments that most people would never take notice of.
I’ve loved this movie from the very first time I watched it, and since then I’ve seen it at least fifteen times. In my opinion, the more I watch it the more I can look into the life of Walter Mitty and see things that most people miss in their actual lives. The story without any further thought put into it may seem a bit cliche as far as fantasies go, and one could be cynical about the whole thing and say that this kind of stuff never actually happens. I see it like this: it’s less about the amazing events Walter underwent and more about how each experience made him feel. While most of us will most likely never go on a random trip to Iceland or Greenland, jump out of a helicopter into the ocean, longboard down an extremely windy road in Iceland, just barely escape a volcanic eruption, climb the Himalayas, or play soccer with a group of Himal people; many of us can feel what he felt while performing each of these amazing feats.
Walter’s story isn’t just about living in the moment in order to truly live, it’s about coming to understand yourself and looking at your experiences for what they are; moments in your life that you’ll never get back. It’s about paying attention to every second of every day and getting the most out of everything you do. Going through our lives, most of us don’t make plans to actually achieve our goals, though we might if we thought that anything was possible. We tend to think of all the possible barriers to realizing our aspirations and instead find easier ways to get through life. This story goes against that kind of thought process and forces you to rethink what might be possible.
Looking back at all the amazing, life-altering experiences Walter had in such a short amount of time, I realized that it’s all the small moments that mattered the most. When he’s long boarding down the windy mountain path, the focus is actually on the freedom he felt because of his ability to lose control and maintain control all at one time. When he’s playing soccer in a valley next to the Himalayan mountains with a group of native people, the focus is on the laughter and the setting sun behind him that signifies the end of the day spent with people he’d otherwise never get the chance to interact with.
Everyone has heard the mantra to remember the little moments in life because it’s those small things that will add up to a larger life experience. But I don’t think most people know what this actually means. When you hear this saying, it doesn’t mean to limit what you’ll do in your life and accept that what you get is what you get. It means to plan big, have what you may think are unattainable goals, and experience what you thought was only possible in the movies. During that process, though, what you should be paying attention to is the little moments that make it an unforgettable experience. You can get a lot out of a large experience by breaking it down into smaller parts and separating them in your mind to use at a later date. This isn’t to say that you should overthink and dissect every event in your life, but rather to say that you should consider each individual event and think about the way that each aspect made you feel and how it affected you in a different way than any other experience you’ve had prior.
Even if you go through the same events over and over in your life, there is always something new to take from each second of every day. Discover what there is to discover from each aspect and leave your mind open to the possibilities. Once again, this may sound cliche but what does it actually mean to you? What do you actually believe can happen in your life. For all the things that you rule out, why can’t they be?
Dreams don’t have to involve becoming famous or traveling the world, they can be simpler without being smaller. What’s important is not what the dream is, but why you want it to come true. Make plans for your life but remember to not be so caught up in these plans that you can’t accept great opportunities when they present themselves to you. Walter’s story allows us to understand that we can say yes-- that there are things out there that we could be doing right now that we may not have ever considered.
One of the best aspects of this movie is that Walter is made out to be such a universal character that anyone can put themselves in his place. This is exactly the point that the writers of this movie are attempting to make: anyone can be Walter Mitty. You can live these very same experiences, or ones equivalent in your own life. The story focuses much less on the personality of Walter himself, and more on the implications of what comes next. Keep in mind, he experiences all this in an attempt to preserve the sanctity of his job and complete an important goal that is much simpler than any single experience he has during the course of the movie. This emphasizes the fact that a simple goal can lead to a life-altering course of actions that were not part of your plan. He gets to achieve his goal and live out his daydreams out because he accepted the lack of control presented to him.
While you may not be able to see all the connections I’m making between the story line, particularly if you haven’t seen the movie for yourself, you can still take away from the experience I had while watching this movie. The importance of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is not in the story itself, but in the realizations you have about yourself and your own desires while watching it. In its simplest form, this film is meant to be a reflection of what you can do with your own life.
If you haven’t seen this movie, I’d highly recommend it. However, even if you choose not to watch it, I implore you to think about what you want to do and why. I encourage you to go through your day, thinking about how each individual experience affects you and the way you view things. Take the most out of your life and accept the lack of control that comes with open possibilities. While they may not always turn out well, they’ll lead to a whole new set of decisions and a whole host of other experiences yet to be had. Do not be afraid to experience new things on your own, and remember that sharing your voice allows others to see what you did even if they’ll never take part in what you’ve done.
