My goal in blogging is to share with others what I learn from others. I get such knowledge, wisdom and inspiration from authors that I want to share it with others who don’t have the time or inclination to read the books. This insight however comes from a movie, “Lars and the Real Girl.” You can watch this movie yourself on Amazon Prime if you would like to experience it for yourself. But here is how it impacted me.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
I love stories that reveal how life works and the power of the little things. It moves my heart to realize little acts of life and love can have such power. Lars and the Real Girl is such a story. The film presents a story of Lars, a lonely, hurting man who is loved by those around him but in ways that don’t help. Lars asks them to love him by loving the “Real Girl”, a life size, atomically correct doll that Lars has met and eventually proposes to. His family and community struggle with that request, eventually honor his request and in doing so start the process of healing. I found that Lars and the Real Girl suggests a new way for me to think about loving others and participating in their healing.
In the opening scenes, family and co-workers express love to Lars by inviting him over for breakfast, welcoming him to work, offering to share pornography, and even tackling him on the driveway. That frustrates them and makes Lars uncomfortable. When Lars brings the “Real Girl”, Bianca into their lives he offers them the opportunity to express their love to him in a way they find uncomfortable. In effect Lars says, show your love for me by accepting my “Real Girl.”
When Bianca first arrived I did a fast forward in my head and saw a story where Lars had a relationship with Bianca in the garage that gave him the strength to function in the real world. That whole scenario was overwritten when Lars requests that Gus and Karen, his brother and sister in law, let Bianca live in their house. Gus and Karen are now confronted with the question, “Will we love Lars in the way he wants to be loved?” Participating in another’s delusion is a tremendous act of love. Spending your time, your energy and your effort on actions that make no sense to you, that only have value because someone you love asks for them, is love.
Responses to Lars request for love his way are varied. Awkwardness, how do you serve dinner to a plastic person? Initial rejection, on the part of the church group. Confrontation, as Gus assets to Lars that Bianca is just plastic. But fairly quickly - acceptance. Acceptance comes in the forms of sharing of clothes, giving of flowers, invitation to a party and then preparing party guests to welcome Bianca. The acceptance evolves into love as Bianca is given employment and becomes a volunteer at the hospital.
Delusions have to end eventually if we are to be healthy people. The resolution to the Lars’ delusion is Bianca’s death. Her death begins when she gets in a fight with Lars. (You have to watch the movie to figure that one out.) After that fight, Lars express to Karen his real delusion. His belief no one loves Lars. Responding with a bust of anger Karen outlines all the community does for Bianca and asserts those actions are nothing less than love for Lars. Once Lars comes to accept that truth, he can respond to a coworkers sharing her loneliness, he enjoys an evening of bowling, and comes to realizes that Bianca is keeping him from living life to its fullness. With that realization, he orchestrates Bianca’s death. The love of community has borne its fruit and Lars is freed from the delusion that he is unloved.
What enlightened me was understanding that Lars had two delusions. Bianca was the surface delusion. It was the delusion people who loved him had to interact with. And it appeared permanent. Underneath the Bianca delusion was a deeper delusion, the delusion that no one loved Lars. As the community loved Lars, by accepting his delusion, the door was opened to uncovering and resolving the deeper delusion. Once the deeper delusion was exposed as false the Bianca delusion was no longer needed.
This two delusion concept is something I can use in my efforts to be of help those around me. My tendency is to love people by giving them what I think they need. At the same time they want to be loved based on their perception of need. Thia is an ongoing frustration that I’ve never really known how to resolve. Lars and the Real Girls proposes that I love others in the way they want to be loved, while searching, with them if possible, for the underlying deception. In finding and resolving that underlying deception will come true freedom.
Make it a great Monday,
Bruce
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