5 Things to Remember about Love, Life and Death
Recently I watched a movie called Two Hearts on Netflix. I won’t give away details because I highly recommend watching it for yourself, but I did arrive at some very powerful reminders through this film about how to love, and how to live and die well.
The movie tells a parallel story of two relationships and then shows how powerfully they intersect. At the end of the movie, I was crying silently, and it was a feeling of cleansing and truth: the movie had communicated to me its core message. I will summarize it for you here in these 5 points:
- Beware of judgments that get in the way of love – love instead. If you’re always judging your loved one and telling them how to be better at something, you have no time to shower them with love and appreciation for who they already are. When that person dies, you realize with regret that you have missed so many opportunities to love them instead of pestering them with judgments.
- Beware of roles versus being authentic as you are – encourage the person. We often get stuck in roles: father, son, brother, professional, volunteer, and we lose sight of the fact that first we are human beings, and our first role is to behave with compassion, humanity, and love toward those we love. This creates a kind of auto-pilot relationship with loved ones because we say and do what we are supposed to, instead of what it is most important to say and do.
- Beware of boxes we try to fit our people into – encourage originality. So often we fall into the trap of keeping up with societal norms and stereotypes – graduate high school, go to college, get a degree, marry, have a family and house and car, and so on. We forget that perhaps the person we love is cut out to be a musician, or an artist, or single, or a professional rugby player. We forget to pay attention to and learn to support the original and unique person in front of us.
- Express love – say you love them before it’s too late. We sometimes are strict with our children, or controlling of them, and in our quest to design the best possible life for them and protect them from harm, we fail to express the most important thing that we all need to hear: we are loved for who we are. When a person dies, it’s too late to express love. We must do it now, while we are alive.
- Live abundantly and in such a way that your death gives love to others – the example in this film was organ donation, which allowed people from different walks of life to create beautiful bonds because of the generosity and detachment of a young person. It was a stunning example of how we can, through death, leave behind a legacy of love.
I hope these points resonate with you and you will watch Two Hearts to feel for yourself these powerful lessons about love, life, and death. I know this film has reawakened me to be more present and express more love to my tribe. The only time we have is the eternal now. Let’s make the most of it.
