July 9, 2003 ~ Shared Experience
Wednesday.
"Well that was a very Melissa moment," Morgan said, smiling, as he buckled in after we left the movie theater where we had just watched Bowling for Columbine.
"Hm?" I asked, turning to him.
"Before the movie. I come back from ordering our food and you are completely ignoring the pre-movie TV show that they were projecting and are instead deeply immersed in a philosophical conversation with some random old guy you don't even know."
I laughed. "Well, I know him now. Yeah, I guess that was a very Melissa moment."
"You should write about it in your journal."
"Oh, I planned to. He was wonderful."
A very, very old man stooped over the end of the row and leaned toward me. "Is this seat taken?" He asked, indicating the chair two down from mine.
"No, take it."
He settled in with a sigh. "I've wanted to see this since it came out, but nowhere ever seemed to be playing it."
"Oh, the Fine Arts Theater played it for a little while."
"Yes, and I missed it when it was there. I live all the way out in Waynesville. I wish it had been more widely shown."
"I guess it wasn't mainstream enough for that."
"Or too controversial," he suggested.
"Perhaps."
"That's really too bad," he said, frowning. "Though sometimes they'll change their policy. There's this movie--you probably haven't even heard of it, nobody has heard of it, Mindwalk?"
I laughed. "Actually, that's my favorite movie, honestly. Excellent movie."
He brightened. "Yes, yes, exactly! It's an excellent movie. But there was not a theater in the entire region that would play it when it came out. So I went to Beaucatcher Cinema and asked them to please, please show it, if only for a night. I would bring them an audience. I explained to the woman, 'I am a teacher, and this movie sums up all of the most important things that I would teach in a class. If you were to show this movie for a few nights, it would be like me teaching thirty classes.' And so she said that they would show it if I could prove that people would come.
"So I wrote to every professor in the humanities and sciences at all of the local colleges, you know, UNCA, Warren Wilson, Brevard, Montreat, and all the others, and I told them about this movie. The response was good, so Beaucatcher agreed to show it for a few nights. And there were lines down the block! People were very angry that they couldn't get in. Ah, it was incredible."
We went on to talk about Mindwalk and the science and philosophies behind it, then he told me all about the new book by Fritjof Capra (the man who wrote the book that Mindwalk is based on). He said that he had retired "back in '78," but has been teaching community classes when he can. He said that teaching made him committed to being a do-gooder for the rest of his life. "To touch people like that is important."
He talked about how he had an "experiential learning" philosophy in his approach to teaching--he liked for the students to draw conclusions from their own lives; he liked to lead discussions rather than lectures, to guide students on their way to finding answers, rather than just giving the answers to them. I agreed, and said that I went to Warren Wilson, and much the same philosophy is employed there. He smiled wide and said that Warren Wilson is the sort of college that he would like to teach at.
When Morgan sat down, the old man introduced himself and said, "fate dropped me in this chair right here tonight." And I smiled because it was true.
He asked about my life as well, and what I do, and we talked for a good long time, but the moment of the conversation that will stick with me is what he said that he would start many of his classes off with: "I'd say to my students, 'Okay. You did not exist, then you were born, you are living, and you will die and will not exist anymore. What do you do with that?'" And he said that what he had concluded, the meaning that he had found, was to experience all that he could, and to make it meaningful by sharing it with others.
And I agreed with him. That we should experience. And that we should share those experiences. For, heavens, what am I doing if not that? What is this journal but a collection of my experiences to share with others?
After the movie, we parted ways, but he took a little bit of me with him, and I took a little bit of him with me, and I'd like to think that we were both better for it.
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