I love finding correlations to life in all my experiences, be it in overhearing a conversation or watching a movie. Everything can be taken as a lesson, and if we’re willing to look beneath the layers, we learn so much.
This was further brought home to me the other night as I sat watching the classic movie “Gentleman’s Agreement” with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire. The premise of the movie in and of itself was thought-provoking: Peck, starring as Skyler Green, is a journalist tasked to write a series on anti-Semitism. He struggles for a time to get the angle he wants on the story, but suddenly it hits him: in order to really understand it, he should pretend to be Jewish and analyze the responses he gets from people. He’s new in town and no one will know that he’s not really Jewish. His experiment goes really well, except for in one area—his new fiancée. She knows he’s conducting an experiment and she says she supports him, but her actions are telling him otherwise.
She doesn’t understand how very much the assignment and the moral implications behind it mean to him. She believes that by saying she supports him, she’s doing everything she needs to do. It isn’t until a good friend of theirs explains it to her that she really “gets” the problem in their relationship. I paraphrase: “A man doesn’t want his wife to just be his best girl. He wants a companion, a sidekick, someone to fight alongside him.” She then realizes that she has to do more than just say it—she has to walk the walk and talk the talk if their relationship is going to work.
I’ve thought a lot about that since seeing the film. It’s so true that for a husband and wife to really be successful, they have to be willing to support the other in everything, with all their hearts. Of course there will be disagreements, but when your spouse has a dream, and it means everything to them, you can help them accomplish it so much faster, and with such a greater feeling of satisfaction, if you get behind them and show them that you want their success as much as they want it for themselves.
I highly recommend this movie if you’re looking for a reminder of what’s really important in life, and I highly recommend that we all more closely examine how we support our spouse’s dreams. Do we roll our eyes when they talk about their ambitions, or do we see the fire in their eyes and cheer them on?
Related Blogs:
Gregory Peck – a Classic Man Among Men