Soulshine

“You saved Richard Callahan’s life. You can’t live it for him.” Helen Pryor, American Dreams There’s an episode of the TV series American Dreams where Jack Pryor is attending a reunion with his Navy buddies. It’s late 1963. It’s been 20 years since these men served together during World War II. One of the guys who shows-up for the reunion is Richard Callahan. Jack saved Richard’s life during the war. But, since that time, Richard hadn’t done much with his life. We learn that Richard is an alcoholic, divorced twice and he’s been unable to keep a job for very long. During the episode, he actually looks like a dead man walking, like a zombie. Richard feels guilty to be alive. Jack had two buddies injured in the same attack and he had to make a choice about who to save. The other man had insisted that he was OK and had told Jack to go help Richard. He died while Jack was saving Richard. Richard is portrayed as a man who has never felt like his life was worth living fr...

“You never lost Mary Hale. You lost yourself.” Herman to Jimmy , Broadway Serenade Many of us think we know what it’s like to “lose” someone else from our lives. Someone stops calling us, or someone de-friends us on Facebook, or someone simply picks up and walks out of our lives. Then there are those situations where someone is simply tolerating us, and we know it. What we may not know, however, is that they are tolerating us despite ourselves. We never “lost” them, but we did a heck of a good job of alienating them and forcing them as far out of our lives as possible—much to our own regret. In the 1939 film Broadway Serenade , Jeanette MacDonald plays Mary Hale. She’s an up-and-coming singer who’s teamed with her piano playing/composer husband, Jimmy Seymour (played by Lew Ayres). Both are talented. Mary has a great voice and Jimmy has real song-writing skills. But Mary is on her way up because she believes in herself. She’s grounded in good self-love and appreciation,...