Stranger Than Fiction

In this blog, we will wander through multiple topics that have shaped my life’s path. Life is like that, full of twist and turns. In Moved by Movies posts, I will share how certain movies have impacted my journey and will maybe move you as well! Enjoy!

Movie: Stranger Than Fiction (Go watch it now or this will be a spoiler!)

Date Written: 2/15/2021 with revision 2/5/23

 After my 4,000 square foot house was spotless and I had done everything in my power to avoid this now seemingly unpleasant bout of writer’s block, I knew it was time to write again. I had written a short piece about said block, hopefully opening the connection to myself once more. My family and I sat down to watch a movie, secretly hoping it would be a mindless one in which I could check out. The fire was roaring as the cold polar vortex held Wisconsin in its grip for what seemed to be an eternal winter in the “big woods.”

Interestingly enough, this particular movie, Stranger Than Fiction, stars Emma Thompson as Karen Eiffel, who is a writer suffering from writer’s block. She is disheveled and chain smoking trying to find a way to “kill off” her main character of her most recent tragic novel. Will Ferrell is Harold Crick, the main character in Karen’s novel. But, there’s a twist because Harold is a real person who begins to hear Karen’s narration in his head. He has spent years and years of doing the same thing over and over again as a number’s focused IRS agent. Harold literally counts the number of times he brushed his teeth or tiles on a floor!

Harold does the same thing every day, has no real future orientated goals and is seemingly just going through the motions, living his life according to the predictable beat of his wristwatch. Until that is, his wristwatch malfunctions and it sets into motion a string of life-changing events. Hearing the narrator narrate it all; his apartment is destroyed, he meets a girl he likes, and even learns how to play the guitar (something he had always wanted to do). In trying to find out what this voice was or who was narrating his life, he enlists the help of a literary professor, Jules Hilbert, played by Dustin Hoffman. They ultimately determine Harold is living in a woman’s novel (it’s a female British narrator whom Harold hears) but they have yet to decipher if Harold’s life is a comedy or a tragedy.

One day, Karen (the writer) finally has the inspiration she needs to create the ending, the tragic death of Harold Crick. But, she has only written it out on paper and it’s not typed yet so Harold hasn’t experienced it. At that moment, Harold and Jules deduce that indeed Harold is actually living in Karen’s novel and it must be a tragedy (because that is the only genre what she writes & where the pieces of Harold’s life fit together). He is indeed the main character in a tragedy.   

To make this long story short, Harold (the main character) finds Karen (the author) in real life and while they struggle to comprehend this strange scenario, Harold and Karen now meeting each other for the first time in real life. Karen hands Harold the written manuscript to end to her book (his life) and he reads it.  He decides that it needs happen this way, he must save a young boy from getting hit by a bus and die.

Harold wakes up and proceeds with his day the same as every other day, knowing that this would be his last day on earth and being ok with it, knowing that despite his sadness, he will save a life by giving his own. He does indeed get hit by the bus thus saving the boy’s life.

Karen wracked with guilt, cannot press the keys for the final letters of the word “death” in her tragedy and so… Harold lives! Her novel isn’t a best seller but she determines that her book was supposed to be a tragedy, where the main character doesn’t know that he was going to die. Yet, Harold knew he was going to die and willing walked to work and into his destiny that day. She wanted that type of person to remain on the earth.

The final scene of the movie shows Harold in a hospital room with broken leg, two broken arms, a head injury and a shard of his wrist watch permanently impaled into his wrist where it had actually stopped him from bleeding out and dying. His girlfriend who is a baker, whom he had met when auditing her business, is there kissing him and feeding him some of her specialty cookies.

“As Harold took a bit of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy…in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin…or a kind and loving gesture…or a loving embrace…or an offer of comfort and soft-spoken secrets…nose plugs (for swimming) and Fender Stratocasters…and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are, in fact, here for a much larger and nobler cause: they are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange. But I also know that it just so happens to be true. A wristwatch saved Harold Crick.

And with that, the narrator stopped narrating. Harold was free to live his life as he pleased, authoring his own story now.  

As I watched this movie play out on an average Sunday night of 2021, one year into the global pandemic, my world had become so small that I had actually vacuumed the couches and floor of the living room 4 times this week, I could most definitely relate with routine and constancy, “counting the number of tiles” in my home. The author and narrator of my life had become cynical and bitter, concocting a hopeless tragic ending of my own.

But, that phrase… “And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are, in fact, here for a much larger and nobler cause: they are here to save our lives.”

 As I stroked my tiger cat’s soft fur as he laid curled up by the warmth of the fire and bent over to hug my daughter, smelling her sweet hair, I realized that these very simple pleasures were indeed saving me from my narrator’s pen, keeping me alive for one more day.

Like Harold, I was obsessed with checking the boxes and was living a very transactional life which robbed me of the joy in living. Counting the tiles, going through the motions, with someone else writing my story.  It was surreal… stranger than fiction.

For so much of my life, I have tried to make others happy, listening to someone narrate my life, as if I had no say in it how the story would go.  I can see clearly now I life affords us the signs, guideposts and clues to our happiness if we are willing to see them. How when we are in the moment, fully alive and aware, the narrator stops narrating (even if just for a minute) and find peace and freedom in that moment. No tiles, no pounds, no dollars in my bank account, nor brushstrokes to count.

 My mission in this life, perhaps, is to find my joy in everyday living. To answer the questions, “Who am I?” and “What makes me happy?” I had been given this message over and over again.

This is why I partnered with It Makes Me Happy! where we teach people to appreciate these nuances, subtleties and anomalies like a wrist watch, a Fender guitar, good food, a whiff of a familiar scent, a piece of art, a beautiful melody or soft fur of a beloved kitty cat. Because, just like Harold’s wristwatch, it’s the little things…that may just save a life, just like they did for me.