Jean Edelman’s Word of the Week: Soul
Jean Turns to Cary Grant’s Compassion in a Famous Scene from “Houseboat”
Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. Recently, Ric and I found Turner Movie Classics (TMC) on cable TV. They were playing 24 Hours of Cary Grant. Wow. So much fun. We recorded all of them. And so when I went back, there was this movie I'd never seen before. It was called Houseboat. I'm going to play a short clip of the movie for you. I was so moved by this one scene with Cary Grant. He's divorced from his wife and she passes away. And so he returns to raise the three children. And this is a scene where he explains life and death to his son. I hope you enjoy this scene.
CARY GRANT: Let me try to explain it to you. See this pitcher? Well, try to think of this pitcher as being me. My body. Now, the pitcher of its own, has no use at all except as a container for something. And in this case, a container for the water, which you can think of as being my life force. Now, try to lose that.
CHILD: Okay, that's easy. There.
CARY GRANT: Well, the only thing is it didn't last. You see it's part of the whole river. It's still in the universe. You haven't lost it. Come on, get rid of it.
CHILD: Well, what about this?
CARY GRANT: What about it?
CHILD: Oh, I get the idea. It'll evaporate, become a cloud and come down someplace else as rain.
CARY GRANT: That's pretty clever of you.
CHILD: I guess when you come right down to it, you can't lose anything.
CARY GRANT: Probably not even life itself. It's just that everything is constantly changing. So perhaps when our life force, our souls leave our bodies, we go back into God's universe and the security of being part of all life again and of all nature. So for all we know, that sort of life after death may be very beautiful.
CHILD: If you say so. Hey pop, don't do anything beautiful for a while, will you?
CARY GRANT: I'm trying not to.
CHILD: And give up smoking. It's bad for older people.
Jean Edelman: This is such a beautiful, beautiful scene. I have never seen any person describe life and death so beautifully and with so much love and compassion.
And so my word this week is very simple. It's SOUL.
The S is to see. To see how we are all connected and part of this human collective. We matter and have so much to bring to this world. So we need to see our light, We need to see our beauty, and we need to see that we never really go away.
The O is for one. There is only one of us. This beautiful word. This one. It just creates unity. This one humanity, this one planet, this feeling of unity. And hopefully we all find our way to understand that as we go through our journey of life.
U is for unity. This collective being supportive. We need each other. We are not separate islands. We are all needing each other. We all have something to share. We all have something to give and we can all support each other in some way. We are never alone.
And the L is for love. To love ourselves and to love others, and to see each of us as a soul, that we all deserve to be here on this earth at this time. We need to stop judging, stop projecting ourselves onto others. See each other as beautiful, beautiful people with one purpose: to live a joyful, wonderful life and to contribute to this wonderful collective, this one humanity, this one earth.
And so I hope you enjoy this scene. I hope that you'll play it over and over again. And just to hold in your heart how beautiful it is and how we are just a wonderful humanity. Have a great week, everyone.