Resolving to live forever

It’s New Year’s Day and 2008 stretches before you like a newly-plowed field. What will you sow? Why not take a stab at achieving immortality? It’s easy and you don’t have to leave the world a Shakespearean body of literature or dot the countryside with libraries (as did Andrew Carnegie) in order to live beyond your years. Few of us have such talent or resources anyway.

A person interested in achieving the most impact from their time on earth (foundational to achieving immortality) must pass along his or her values to the generations that follow. The most effective way to do this is by sharing and perserving those precious life stories. I’ve written about this before but it’s worth repeating: Your life stories connect you to generations past and to generations to come. Your stories keep you alive. Your stories link you, one generation to the next, keeping your memory alive long after your passing.

I’m especially charged up about the value of storytelling after seeing the movie Sweet Land. (Go to the web site.) If you haven’t seen the film, rent it on DVD; if you’ve already seen the film, see it again. You missed something.

Sweet Land is an independent film set and filmed in Minnesota; it tells the story of Olav, a Norwegian farmer, and Inge, his mail-order German bride, who is ostracized by Olav’s Norwegian neighbors from the moment she arrives, circa 1920. Critics have hailed the film for its cinemetography, its plot, its sparse script, and its masterful acting. And while the film deserves the multitude of praise it has received, all the reviewers have focused on the love that develops between the main characters.

But there’s another, more powerful relationship revealed in Sweet Land, one between the elderly Inge and her grandson, the man charged with perserving her legacy. It is between these two characters that the real power of Sweet Land unfolds. Inge’s story is revealed by the grandson and her legacy endures because her tale exerts power over him. (To give you more detail than this would be to spoil the plot for you.)

If you don’t understand the enduring power of a personal life story, even a story of a simple immigrant or a humble farmer, see Sweet Land. Once you do, you’ll understand how our life stories allow us to live on long after we’ve drawn our final breath.