Which Chances Are Worth Taking?

I saw “Revolutionary Road” a few months ago and was quite affected by it. The movie touched on some themes that I found highly relevant to my life this year — namely, what risks are worth taking, and how do you decide?

If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie is about a woman (April, played by Kate Winslet) who dreams of a way out of a domestic routine she never wanted for herself, and which she considers herself better than. She wants to take a huge risk and move abroad to Paris, leaving behind the trappings (quite literally) of the comfortable life, in order to feel alive again. But her husband (Frank, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is (not unreasonably) afraid to pass up a promotion at his bland day job, and the chance for an even more secure life that comes with it. His decision seems especially fair since the couple has two kids, and since April’s Parisian plan does verge on the fantastical.

April’s dream may indeed have been unrealistic, as many characters in the film think, but turns out to have been also clearly essential to the couple’s happiness, and thus a risk they should have taken. Indeed, the really sage advice in the film comes from Frank’s boss, who tells him, referring to the offered promotion, “You only get two or three chances in life and you’d better grab them by the balls.” Frank doesn’t apply this advice correctly; the chance he passes up–going to Paris–is the one he should have grabbed.

The really hard, interesting question raised by the movie is: How do you know which chances are worth taking and which you should let pass by? My mother died when I was 13 and didn’t leave me much advice, but one piece of advice she did tell me that has stuck with me is “Always do” — don’t let chances, opportunities pass you by.  But you can’t always “do” everything that is offered to you, and nor should you. That is a recipe for misery.

The movie had special relevance for me because I’ve been here in Germany this year precisely because, like April, I was trying to shake up my life and feel alive again, live up to some special potential I believed I had. But I’ve had a decidedly mixed experience this year, and I can’t honestly say I made the right decision in taking this fellowship. It was an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up–I felt that I had passed up too many opportunities in the last few years, and this would be one too many. I wanted to take a risk. But I wonder whether I became in fact too willing to take a risk, any risk, to change my life, without doing the due diligence that could have helped me make sure the year abroad would actually be a worthy endeavor. In this particular case, perhaps I was a little too much April, not enough Frank.

Or perhaps the real lesson here (and which did not occur to me at the time I saw Revolutionary Road, but which now stands out clearly) is that old saying and self-help book title: “Wherever you go, there you are.” Perhaps had I not come I would have regretted that decision; perhaps had I not applied I would have regretted never having lived abroad, never having done a fellowship. Perhaps, had April and Frank gone to Paris, their lives would have ended up in more or less the same tragic way. In the end, the best we can probably do is try to make the best decisions we can, and then make the best of the situations that ensue.