collateral beauty

Love, Time, Death.

These three abstractions connect every, single, human being on Earth.

Everything that we covet, everything that we fear not having, everything that we ultimately end up buying. It’s because at the end of the day, we long for love, we wish we had more time, and we fear death.

Love, Time, Death.

– Howard

The quote above is taken from the 2016 movie, Collateral Beauty. This movie, directed by David Frankel, with a big cast consisting of Will Smith, Edward Norton, Keira Knightley, Michael Peña, Naomie Harris, Jacob Latimore, Kate Winslet, and Helen Mirren did not fair well with critics, but personally, I found it to be a good watch, and quite thought provoking. It stirred enough in me to make note of it, to give the concept more thought, to possibly one day write about it, and here I am.

Spoiler alert, “Howard (Will) is a successful advertising executive and runs his firm with his partners Whit (Edward), Claire (Kate), and Simon (Michael). Howard is happily married to Madeleine (Naomie), and they have a daughter by the name of Olivia. When Olivia turns 6 years old, she dies from a rare form of cancer.” Collateral Beauty

With this loss goes his will to live, to love, and to interact with other humans. In his despair Howard writes letters to Love, Time, and Death, voicing his anger at them, and ironically as the movie unfolds you will learn that each one of his business partners is challenged by love, time, and death.

This blog isn’t about getting into the details of those letters and how that unfolds. I was more intrigued by the thought around the concept of collateral beauty and the interconnectivity of love, time, and death.

Collateral Beauty is the idea that no matter how dark or how difficult a time in our life may be, there is always something beautiful happening in the midst of it all.

We just have to look, sometimes really hard, to see it. On a very basic level, it’s the same concept, “every cloud has a silver lining.”

In my humble opinion, I suspect the reason for the poor reviews, is that while the movie was a bit long in some parts, and definitely not the best I have ever seen, it takes a deep and dark look into someone’s pain and suffering.

As a whole, our society does not want to take a long hard look at pain or suffering. We often avoid getting too deep with other’s in their pain because it’s uncomfortable. But uncomfortable for whom? Why is it so uncomfortable?

Is it because we might have to face our own fears of perhaps being in their exact position?

Is it because we feel responsible to pull them out of it and we can’t?

Is it because we don’t want to or can’t see anything good coming out of something so horrible because it feels wrong?

I’m sure there are many reasons why, and many questions that rise to the surface for us from being in the midst of someone’s deepest, and darkest moments. Truth is, we all search for meaning in heartbreak and death, and it’s love, love and time are in the middle of our suffering, pain, and loss, that is collateral beauty.

photo credit: Michael Fenton @michaelfenton

Maybe you are scratching your head right now at the statement, this is collateral beauty? It just doesn’t fit together, and you’re right. What is wrong with the name of this movie is the use of the words collateral and beauty together. When we think in terms of collateral, we always think in terms of collateral damage.

In other words, it generally has a negative connotation.

Collateral damage is always the negative by-product of a catastrophe or tragedy. This is an easy place for us to go because it is so much more evident and obvious, but collateral beauty? We have to look really hard in the tragedies and horrific events to see beauty, to see “the glass half-full,” or, better yet, to see God and His goodness, but it’s there.

I think it’s important to mention here, the difference between looking and seeing, because there is a distinct difference.

In the movie, National Lampoon’s Vacation, there is a scene where the Griswolds visit the Grand Canyon and they stand on the edge of one of the most majestic vistas, arms looped together, and only glance at the canyon for about two seconds when Chevy Chase says, “OK, let’s go!”

The Grand Canyon! The national attraction that draws millions of visitors year after year. People spend hours, days, even weeks hiking, taking a scenic drive, and photographing the views and the Griswolds took it all in before you could even say, “Grand Canyon!” That is the perfect example of the difference between looking and seeing. The Griswolds looked, but they definitely did not see.

photo credit: Oleg Chursin @olegchursin_photo

photo credit: Patrick Hendry @worldsbetweenlines

Now, I realize this movie was a comedy, and that particular scene was meant for comedic effect, but I believe there’s some truth to it. How often do we look at something and not really see it? For example, what color is your neighbor’s front door? What color is their car? Most of us go through the motions of our days completely unobservant to almost everything going on around us.

So, what is the difference between looking and seeing?

Webster’s says that to look means to direct your eyes in a particular direction, while in order to see, you must notice or become aware of someone or something by using your eyes. To see requires that we become aware, that we awaken our senses. For most of us, this is a skill that must be honed. We must be intentional to actually see what’s in front of us or going on in the little places of our lives.

“Seeing is not only noticing that something is, but understanding it, attending to it, and looking past the obvious to enjoy its meaning and nuances. This takes time, patience, and attention to detail. Though we spend most hours of our days with our eyes wide open, we certainly don’t spend that entire time seeing. Perhaps we are so inundated with visual input that we simply can’t take the time to attend to it all, and maybe we need a little help figuring out what actually matters.” ~ Alli Berman, Brain Fitness expert

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau

In order to actually experience the collateral beauty in life we have to see into our experiences, both the good ones and the bad ones. It requires that we do more than passively look at things going on in order to really see and know the beauty in the midst of the time passing between love and death, between life and death.

So, what is love, what is time, and why bring death in the mix?

How are they interconnected?

Can there actually be something called, “collateral beauty?”

In order to understand collateral beauty and this interconnectivity, I first had to look at each word individually.

Let’s start with love…We all long for love.

Love is the foundation of life. God created this world not because He needed us, but because he desired fellowship with us, and because He loves us. Love is His gift to us, and love is His gift for us.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
(John 3:16)

This describes God’s love and His plan for the happiness of His children, you, and me.

With love, there are good times as well as the bad…

When we think of love, it’s easy to think about good feelings. But real love is not dependent on feelings. It is about so much more than how I feel about someone. Whether it is romantic love, love of family, a friend, a co-worker, so often love is given and received based on what I myself get out of it. But what do I do when it costs me something to love someone?

Real love is not free. It comes at a cost, the investment of our time, and it requires vulnerability. In order to have the love we all long for, we must be willing to risk the potential price because there are no guarantees in this life. The hardest part about love is knowing that love co-exists in our joy and our sorrow.

With love, there are good times as well as the bad, and knowing it’s work and can cause pain is often why people fear being vulnerable enough to love, or, why they don’t want to put in the time it takes to nurture love, or fix it when it’s compromised.

Love is in the darkness and in the light, the sunshine, and the storm. Love is in my happiness in a relationship, and love is in my pain of a relationship. Love is the reason for everything. Love is the only “why.”

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
(1 Corinthians 1-3)

Our longing for love comes from our deepest roots. God made us for love. To love and be His love. Wise people know they need people, they do the work and invest the time to build relationships and build a life that’s rich with love because they know…a life with love is a life with a few thorns, but a life without love is a life without roses.

Wise people know love is worth the cost because love is the only “why.”

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
(1 Corinthians 13:13)

Love is the greatest of all because one day, when Jesus returns we will no longer need faith or hope because He who is love will be all that remains.

Love is our central why of existence, why we are here, but love can only gain significance and unfold through time.

Time is in all we experience. Time is that little, annoying, constant drip, drip, drip sound in the back of our minds reminding us that life is passing by, that we are limited in our ability to really control it, that we cannot make more of it, and we don’t know how much time we will have between our first inhale to our final exhale.

photo credit: Ben White @benwhitephotography

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” – Theophrastus.

We kill time.

We save time.

We waste time, lose time, get robbed of time, we have all the time in the world, yet not enough time to get things done, and no one is powerful enough to stop the march of time or slow it down.

However, is time something far beyond our control?

photo credit: Justin Veenema @justinveenema

Actually, it isn’t. At least not one hundred percent beyond our control anyway.

While we cannot affect the flow of time, we do have the freedom to manage our time and get the most out of it, and while time does tick away, we can see the collateral beauty in the passing of time, but it requires intentionality and perspective. Time management is important because of the brevity of our lives. Our earthly sojourn is significantly shorter than we are inclined to think.

To live as God would have us live, it is essential we make the best possible use of our allotted time. As the Psalmist David so aptly points out, “You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalm 39:4–5).

The apostle James echoes this: “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Indeed, our time on earth is fleeting—in fact, it is infinitesimally small compared to eternity.

Knowing that we will have to give an account to the One who gives us time should motivate us to use it well.

Moses prays, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). A good way to gain wisdom is to learn to live each day with an eternal perspective. Our Creator has set eternity in our hearts. “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

While we cannot possibly fathom eternity, we are to live our lives with an eternal perspective, that being our life after earth. Time is a luxury we often throw away by wasting our lives in trivialities, but if we want to see and leave collateral beauty in the wake of our existence we must remember that time is the bridge that connects our living to our legacy.

“Time is in everything we experience, the bridge between love and death, where our grand and not so grand dramas of existence unfold; time is where we place our hopes for a better future. Love may be the central why of our existence, but it can only unfold and gain significance and meaning within time.” -Marcelo Gleiser

Both love and time depend on each other. When you give time to love, you get love in return, and one of the closest places we get to experience the rewards of the time we gave to love, is often in our final days of life.

photo credit: Victoria Roman @victoriaroman

You can find many beautiful and touching stories about people who have passed away, and their views and thoughts about love, time, and death during their final days, but the most recent one that speaks to my heart is of 30-year-old Jane Marczewski who many of us have come to know as Nightbirde.

She is known from America’s Got Talent (AGT), where she performed her hit song "It's OK ." Jane recently passed away after her four-year battle with cancer.

I still remember being blown away at her telling Simon and the judges on AGT, “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” Here is this beautiful, sweet soul, diagnosed with cancer at 26, fighting it, believing she was cured, only to be abandoned by her husband when her cancer returned, and she is coaching, lifting others up still chasing her dreams with positivity and hope in the midst of, better still, in spite of her pain and fears.

How could she do this? She had faith and she was intentional to see the beauty in the midst of her trials. She believed that God was in the midst of her pain, and yet she also questioned where He was in the middle of it all.

“Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you. When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient to God. In fact, it might mean you’re right in the center of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss.” – Chuck Swindoll

photo credit": Road Trip with Raj @roadtripwithraj

photo credit: Emiliano Vittoriosi @emilianovittoriosi

“God is not what we wish He was. But if we can stomach it long enough, we’ll taste for ourselves that He is infinitely more, lost in the fog of miseries and miracles. We are onlookers and partakers of this great miracle—that we can hurt this badly and still love Him. I spend a lot of time squeezing my eyes shut and trying to remember what I believe; counting my breaths in the grief cloud; burying my face into God’s t-shirt.”

“I remind Him sometimes, (and not kindly) that I believed Him when He told me the story He wrote for me is good, and that He never stops thinking of me. I must be a fool in love, because even from under all this debris, I still believe Him. And when I’m too angry to ask Him to sit on my bed until I fall asleep, He still stays.” Nightbirde. (content from Nightbirde’s IG & taken from various posts)

Nightbirde knew intimacy with her maker. This is a woman who knew God created her for a purpose, and while it didn’t look like she had planned, she was going to see the collateral beauty in what she was experiencing for however long she had time to live, to love, and to impact her world, or perhaps the whole world. Time was the bridge between her love and her death.

The collateral beauty of our trials and challenges is that they allow us to re-start, to re-invent, to re-create, to re-establish who we are – to get rid of the old so that the new can emerge. Jane (Nightbirde) and what she left behind is the collateral beauty of what emerged from that beautiful soul and all that she gave and left the world in her final days.

“Sickness was never part of God’s original plan. We weren’t supposed to get sick or age. In fact, we weren’t supposed to die. But it goes back to our first parents, Adam, and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the forbidden fruit, we wouldn’t get sick or age. But because they did, we age and have illness, and ultimately, we die.” Pastor Greg Laurie

So, what we know from scripture, is that it was never God’s intention for us to die, but because of sin we will. Each and every one of us will one day die.

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2, “ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die…”

Christianity does not teach us that we will not suffer. The opposite is true. Love leads to suffering. God’s love for us and His desire to make a way for us required Jesus to suffer and die so that we might have grace, mercy, and life after death.