I was 14 when I first saw City Slickers (1991), a baby boomer mid-life crisis comedy.
A then 43-year-old Billy Crystal starred as Mitch, a father and husband filled with ennui who goes on a dude ranch cattle drive “vacation” with a few of his friends. As the weight of adulthood, time, responsibility, and life had taken its toll, this guys’ trip was a quest to regain his lost “smile.” I thought it a funny movie at the time; to this day I still make the odd reference to it, just as I am wont to do with any number of movies.
And then in the ensuing years, as the weight of adulthood, time, responsibility and life all took their toll on me, as I grew older, the film has taken on greater resonance and meaning. A psychologist hearing me talk about it whilst splayed on the couch might posit it was a seminal film-going experience, one planting a seed of fear for family and the ravages of time, a comedic reading that informs my decisions in relationships and in my existence to this very day.
But I’m not a psychologist so I’ll just say that I’ve been thinking a lot about that movie recently, a movie that at times hasn’t aged well and in some regards remains timeless… or at the very least timely for this now fortysomething guy.
There are some aspects of my life where I seem to have lost my “smile.” Not everyone who is lost is lucky enough to wander. I am lucky. I’m quite aware of that and that knowledge sometimes results in a puritanical guilt reflux, a downward spiraling questioning of how dare I not-smile when there is so much to be smiling about.
What once was lost though may be found… and thus I set about a wanderin’ once more.
To wit:
