I recently took my young son to see the movie “Hugo” a film directed by Martin Scorscese.
I expected to be sitting through yet another “boorish” made for children movie but was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. Instead what was presented was a senstive and thought provoking film which had as much to do with the passage of “time” as it did “loss and healing”.
The central character of the movie “Hugo” an orphan lived in a railway station in the heart of Paris and had taken over the responsibility of keeping the stations clocks running to time after the death of his father and the disappearance of his adoptive alcoholic uncle.
The impact of this rather unassuming film was such that I was brought to tears on a number of occasions. It is hard to express in any logical sense why this was except to say that on the one hand the movie dealt with the ideas of “life purpose” and “broken individuals” who had chosen to ignore their true calling and their ultimate realignment with their destiny through the caring intervention of others.
One of the central themes expressed by Hugo himself in the movie was the understanding that the universe is just one big machine in which we all play unique and vital roles much like “cogs” and “wheels” do in a timepiece. Hugo the “fixer” struggles to restore a broken automaton and at the same time is caught up in a human drama in which he also quite naturally and skillfully reconnects an aging and depressed film maker with his soul’s unique purpose and in the process finds a new family.
For me this movie represents many of the elements of the “Heroes Journey” but more significantly it also depicts how we can easily become distracted by life’s challenges and seeming failures and can end up travelling down a train track in the wrong direction until eventually we just run out of steam and cease to experience the pure joy life that comes from living a life of passion and purpose.
How many of us have experienced and are currently experiencing that feeling of exhaustion and contraction that inevitatbly follows being out of steam and on the wrong train track? When that happens who is there for you?
I know that when I am coaching others to success I experience being on purpose, energised and living a joy filled and abundant life. I have taken the wrong track and have been derailed on many occasions yet somehow I always seem to be able to with the help of my mentors and friends find my way back again to where I am destined to be – in the service of others.