A life rarely reveals itself as a straight line. There are experiences that shape us before we understand them. This Soul Biography traces the arc of such a life where somewhere inside a profound loss, an early knowing returned: that life might be asking something more.
Four friends set out from where they stood. One went North. One East. Another South. The last one, West. Each in search of meaning. Each in search of the point of their own life …
He knocked on the back door. Three times. As he always had. Heavily worn trouser knees. Spectacles sat at the end of an elderly nose. And eighty two well-used years under his belt. ‘Can Albert come out to play?’
In this time of visceral chaos what if this were the last time I were to see you. Might the possibility of words left unsaid haunt the rest of my days …
I’m in an entrance hall. And I look towards the furthest doorway. I see her. She looks up. And immediately casts her eyes downwards. She assumes that I can see her. I can. But what she believes I can see, she is ashamed of. She doesn’t wish for it to be seen.
We won’t have peace until we can both agree,’ said the two fools on either side of an argument. ‘We won’t have peace until the other gives way,’ said each about their foe. But peace could never be had …
If I am to be entirely honest you would be a fool not to give this you full and undivided attention for its full and undivided duration. I imagine the experience will contribute in ways you might not be able to place words against. It is a profound wondering about the experience of life, death and cancer.
What you will see here, in this astonishing 89 seconds, is a normally reserved man speak from his very depths with no filter to the world. As his wife of many years sat just 12 feet away. Filmed in front of a ‘Soul Biographies Live’ Audience.
The carer to a partner with a debilitating illness so often carries a vast unseen weight. A weight that will change everything. Perhaps we are not as in control as we continue to suppose. And perhaps in the fragility of such a realization, we might break wide open and come to understand what it is that life is asking of us.
This is about one half of a minute. A young girl articulates one of our greatest yearnings. You may well be compelled to watch it over and over again, until its meaning seeps deep into your bones. Which is where it was always intended to live.