"To live is enough..."

Beautiful things: Recently I offered my recommendation for the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I've been thinking about a short exchange that takes place between Walter and the famed adventurer, Sean O'Connell. Sean Penn plays this elusive, grizzled, zen-like photographer, quietly delivering his lines as a sage might mutter in the vague direction of an attentive apprentice:

"Beautiful things don't ask for attention."

Beauty attracts attention, demands it by its very essence, but in humility does not seek that attention. We, who observe that beauty are compelled to it and to admire it. It is something that happens in the moment without intention or reflection. It just is...

Right there. Right Here: While sitting in a crag high in a central Asian mountain range, peering though a telephoto lens at the elusive snow leopard, Walter asks Sean "When are you going to take it?"...

Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty: Stay in it?
Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.

The moment is important. Our thoughts can be so easily overwhelmed by focusing on regrets of the past, or anxiety about the future.

"If you have one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you are ready to piss all over today."

This positioning, spending too much attention on what was, and what might yet be, makes experiencing life so difficult. The need to capture beauty through a lens gets in the way of "staying with it." Just be right there. Right here.

All moments in the now: Even terrible moments progress better when the now is attended to, rather than being absent "Right there. Right here." But the best moments are those that we want to stay in, and in the moment, time stretches out into forever and therein lies a kind of happiness that is quite amazing. The moment becomes a thing of beauty that does not ask for attention, and in fact, is ruined by too much cognition...

Our true home is not in the past. Our true home is not in the future. Our true home is in the here and the now. Life is available only in the here and the now, and it is our true home. -- Thich Nhat Hanh

When I am in my true home I am living, and that is distraction-free bliss...

"To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life."

On March 18, 1939 James Thurber's short story masterpiece, The Secret Life of Wallter Mitty, was published in The New Yorker. Words like Mittyesque and Mittyish have become oft used adjectives for people who seem to resemble the ineffectual fantastical day-dreamer, Walter.
Although the two film adaptions of this story differ greatly from the original story, the central roll of a  character, Walter Mitty—who fantasizes heroic and triumphant moments sometimes at the expense of very real moments in his own life—is common to all three. I recently watched the most recent film adaption a second time, liking it even more than my first viewing—in which I felt "I really liked that movie a lot. What a great, fun, movie. Why didn't we see this when it was in theaters?"

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a 2013 romantic comedy-drama adventure cult film directed by, produced by, and starring Ben Stiller. Gore Verbinski served as executive producer.^[7][8] This is the second film adaptation of James Thurber's 1939 short story of the same name. The 1947 version was produced by Samuel Goldwynand directed by Norman Z. McLeod, with Danny Kaye playing the role of Walter Mitty.^[9] The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 5, 2013.^[10] The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was theatrically released on December 25, 2013 in North America, to generally mixed reception, and was a moderate box office success, however the film has gathered a cult following since its release.^[11] (Wikipedia)

I want to avoid plot items and spoilers, but need to figure out how to convince people to go back a few years and see this movie that so many seemed to have missed. It's a film where the underdog has moments of success that we can share. It is not overly sickeningly sweet, but offers elements of optimism in the midst of seemingly overwhelming insurmountable odds. None of it feels real, and yet all of it feels completely real. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, eh? Ultimately, Mitty is supposed to be an ineffectual dreamer, but Ben Stiller (lead actor and director) manages to present us with an extremely likable Mitty who manages to DO something in his life beyond just dream. He comes off as heroically likable while somehow still playing the teased schoolboy who often gets picked last or who is overlooked completely.

The cinematographic shots are excellent. There is a quirkiness that works well with Mitty's day-dreaming. Locations from Greenland to Afghanistan make me want to travel and trek. It seems fitting for a plot that centers around the last print cover for Time-Life Magazine:  

Watch a trailer and then go rent the movie: