#03. Will Was Good

Will was good, and so are we.

In my class today, we discussed the Great Depression and the fear factor. Fear always asks the same question: "What if?" During the Depression, people saved so much for an uncertain future that they forgot the present was now. They held on so tightly to what little they had that they couldn't see what was possible. We do the same thing with our lives—holding back our gifts, our love, our futures, all because of fear.

Think about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, two kids in their twenties writing a screenplay. What if they had questioned the outcome instead of diving in? They didn't. They wrote Good Will Hunting and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay.

In the movie, a math teacher finds Will Hunting in the corridor and shouts, "That's people's work, don't do graffiti here!" As they approach the wall, they discover Will has solved the toughest problem in the class—a problem that stumped MIT students, solved anonymously on a hallway chalkboard. But genius wasn't Will's real problem. Fear was.

Later, therapist Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams, asks Will a simple question: "What do you wanna do?" Will doesn't have the precise answers we think we should give. He's brilliant but lost, talented but terrified. Here's what makes Sean different—he doesn't search for answers. Instead, he talks about his own life, his mistakes, his late wife, showing Will how to be vulnerable around the people we love. Vulnerability is a strength, not a liability.

We're all dealing with this gap between the self we are and the self we want to be. But what if we are more than the fear we experience? The most powerful scene comes when Sean tells Will, again and again: "It's not your fault." Will breaks down because Sean gave him permission to be human, to stop running, to accept love.

The movie ends with Will driving to California to find the girl he pushed away, and Sean leaving for a trip he's been postponing. Both men choosing the uncertain road over the safe one. It's bittersweet, not because it's perfect, but because it's real. The ending whispers to us: make that one little effort, give it a try, just one more time.

In the end, it's all about a road not taken for fear of what doesn't even exist today. But Will was good—broken and brilliant and scared and good. And so are we.

What road are we not taking today? Or rather taking today?         

(Pic.) The "end of the road" is actually only a push away from opening new pathways :)