127 Hours of Thanksgiving

I had almost got sucked into couchland and ordered food from the diner last night when I decided instead to leave the apartment and see 127 Hours. It turned out to be the perfect entertainment choice for the eve of Thanksgiving. I have enjoyed the majority of Danny Boyle's movies, and early in this film, there's a nice reference to 28 Days Later, in which the sight of a jet plane passing overhead represents the exact opposite of what it did in the zombie-apocalypse thriller: helplessness instead of hopefulness.

I expected him to tell the story of Aron Ralston's adventure in a way that would keep me interested despite my knowing the ending, but I had no idea how succinctly the movie would nail a bunch of really tricky themes, or themes that happen to resonate deeply with me. The main character finds himself trapped in a rock, alone and on the verge of an inevitably slow and lonely death. He doesn't want to go out like that, though, and, for seemingly the first time in his headstrong existence, he is forced to think about how the subconscious, often selfish choices he made seem to have consigned him to this fate.

Stuck inside the rock, Ralston has the mental space to reminisce, hallucinate and contemplate on the core elements of what he believes and how he operates. He reflects on the role solitude played in his life relative to companionship; his individuality vs. his place in a community; his appreciation, or lack thereof, for the people whose calls he wish he had returned; his regret for spurning the love of a woman who just wanted to be let inside his world; his more immediate regret for not leaving a note telling anyone where he was going, even though it would have previously been out-of-character.

I related to Ralston's story for a couple reasons, and a good basis for "giving thanks" is to be thankful that you're not stuck in a rock today. Like Ralston, I was born into this world with plenty of comfort and privilege, and I don't often forget it. I am constantly grateful for where I live and the opportunities that I have had, and I am very thankful just to have one shot on this earth.

Also like Ralston, I am in a deep, dark chasm, and it feels like it was created mostly of my own design, however inadvertently. What might have started three years ago as a standard kind of slump or rut has steadily fractured into what now looks like a bottomless pit of failure. Whatever I was building towards (or thought I was building towards) during the first few years of my poker career has steadily unraveled, and I am objectively very disappointed in myself for the choices I made.

There are too many nuances and subtleties to the story to give it justice in a blog post, and there are also a couple simple facets that tell the bulk of the story more plainly: Six years ago, when I was 27 years old, I was embarking on two wonderful and unexpected journeys in my life--becoming a professional poker player and, after one extremely fortuitous night in December of 2004, meeting a woman who loved me and appreciated me for exactly who I was. My first adult career and my first adult love.

Well, I am now coming to the end of my third consecutive losing year in poker, and the relationship is also over, and I know that if I had handled my life more responsibly, I would not be presented with the shambles of an existence that was very promising not too long ago. I know what did me in, and it was not a lack of passion, hard work, or intelligence, but rather a lack of organization for too long and, in many cases, a flippant disregard for an important detail or too. I took a lot for granted.

I've listened to enough Curtis Mayfield to know that all I can do now is pick myself up, ride it out, keep on moving. Figure out a way to revive my poker career or a way to find a new, more rewarding career. There is no surrender and no retreat. I also can't beat myself up over it too much--some of the elements of my downfall were out of my control, rooted in chance, logistics and the infamous path created by the "best intentions."

And although it is a somewhat lonely Thanksgiving for me, I really am grateful for the California sun shining out the window, my health, my family, my friends and acquaintances, and a million other little things. For that matter, I am even thankful for the failures I endured and the mistakes I made, because I got to experience plenty of the good before the bad.