You Complete Me

To the real film fanatic, this phrase should look familiar. You may recognise it as one of the key sentences Tom Cruise spoke to Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire. It’s when he explains why he wants to stay with his wife: because she completes him as a person.

Oprah Winfrey once dismissed this as not being realistic. She did a show on unrealistic expectations of marriage. When her guest, a marriage counselor, gave a list of unrealistic expectations of marriage, Oprah was reminded of Jerry Maguire and said something like “Oh, so it’s not like in Jerry Maguire, where …” and she mentioned this as an example of an unrealistic expectation of marriage.

This is hard for me to say, because I happen to like Oprah and her shows very much.* But I disagree with her on this. Strongly. And, naturally, I’ll tell you why.

Have you seen Jerry Maguire? It’s about this sports manager (Tom Cruise) who gets fired because of his ideals, and who, on leaving his employer, takes a financial secretary (Renee Zellweger) with him who is really impressed with him. The next phase in his and her life is difficult, with a lot of financial problems. His only client, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. (who got an Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for this), made a real impression on Tom with his devotion to his wife and children. And when money got tight, Tom decided to ask his lovely assistant to marry him. “We can save a lot on health insurance”, is his excuse. Renee doesn’t care, for she is hopelessly in love with him, and he is great with her young son.

Cuba warns him that he isn’t doing it right. “You didn’t have the talk, did you?” he says. His manager never did mention  love when the decision to get married was made. And sure enough, the two spouses seem to grow somewhat apart. Or, rather, Renee realises that they never really were that much together (in an emotional sense) from the start. And they decide to take a break from each other.

But then something great happens. And suddenly Tom realises that the most important moments in his life are only as great as they can be if he can share them with his wife. He breaks off the long business trip that was intended to be “a break from each other” to go tell his wife what he has learned about his feelings. And he introduces his explanation that he misses her and wants her with the words “I’m not letting you get rid of me.” (If you break out in tears easily, don’t watch this part, because this is the tear jerker scene…) And then he explains that although he had a great night, it wasn’t really so great as it could have been because she was not there to share it with him. And he ends with “You complete me”, a phrase he picked up from two lovers in an elevator, something that he knew really touched his wife, but the meaning of which he was only now able to grasp.

So what do we have here? A man of the world who discovers that marriage is all about needing and complementing each other. And Oprah and her guest characterized it as being unrealistic. Why? Probably because people tend to think they should conclude from this that if they need and complement each other, married life will always be bliss, sitting on cloud nine, and that it will be absolute heaven. And that, of course, is not true. You see, the trouble with films is that they end. They end on a high, usually. At least, many American films do. (We won’t mention French and Russian films here…) They do not show you that after Tom and Renee embrace, they will have years and years of living together with both good and bad times. They are likely to have rows, disagreements, sickness, financial problems, concerns about children and other matters. But they are also likely to have times when they enjoy each other’s company, times of comforting each other, strengthening and supporting each other, and times when they really enjoy their children.

And this, Oprah, is what I think marriage is all about. This is perfectly realistic. There is nothing wrong with saying you need your spouse, that he or she completes you (and you him or her, let’s not forget that part!), as long as you realise that this does not mean just absolute bliss. You should be prepared to have both good and bad times. Just as long as you keep in mind that having bad times does not mean your marriage is bad. Just as long as you do not think that a disagreement or row means that the foundations of your marriage are crumbling beneath you.

This is illustrated in a really good and even humorous way, in The Story of Us. Subheading underneath the title on one of the film posters is “Can a marriage survive fifteen years of marriage?” In the description of the storyline on TheStoryOfUs.net I found these highly interesting questions: “How can qualities that were once so endearing become so infuriating that you lose sight of what is important?” And – here it comes, Oprah! – “At what point do you forget that without the other person you are incomplete?” (Emphasis added by me.) One of the producers/writers of the film was Jessie Nelson. She said this about the way she sees marriage, a view which is illustrated very well by the film: “No one ever told me how hard it would be. You fall in and out of love. There are magical times, and then there are challenging times.” For both main characters, Ben (Bruce Willis) and Katie Jordan (Michelle Pfeiffer), fighting has become the condition rather than the exception. They believe that their only option is a trial separation. During their time apart, both Ben and Katie reflect on the value of their shared history. They contemplate the “dance”, perfected over time, that has made them an “us.” I won’t give away how the film ends. But whatever happens, the story gives you a good idea of how important it is to be realistic and take the bad with the good. And how it is possible to be committed to your spouse without you or him/her being the “perfect partner” – who is a fictitious character, anyhow, even outside the film.

I conclude from both films and from real life experience that you can be both romantic and realistic. You can be realistic and still like Jerry Maguire. You can be realistic and have a good marriage, a great “Story of Us”. You can have both good and bad times, and not lose hope. You can have both good and bad times, and still be happy some of the time. No, not all of the time, because that is definitely not realistic!

* What do you mean, I’m a man? Of course I am. Should that stop me from liking Oprah? Absolutely not. I’m like that. When I’m in America, you can tell I’m like that by looking at the TV channels I watch. I don’t like “Movies for men who like movies” very much, but I do like “Life, the women’s channel”. And no, I’m not gay. I’m just a bit more sensitive, perhaps, than most men I know, or than they like to appear to be. And so I also like Oprah.

Note – just to satisfy your curiosity: Yes, I’m married, and have been since 1982. We have three children.

(Previously published as ‘Conrad’s Column.)’

Pedantic or Professional?

As a language professional, I often find it difficult to separate my work from my private life. As a dedicated interpreter and translator who is constantly striving to perfect his own use of language, and who is often called upon to correct his colleagues’ translations (we all make mistakes, after all), I have difficulty not doing this in my private life.

I know that it’s usually better to bite my tongue when someone makes a linguistic mistake which I could correct with just a few words. But sometimes I come across situations where the mistakes other people make clearly lead to confusion. After all, a difference of only one or two letters, one poorly chosen word, or even a single comma or apostrophy too much or too little, can make a huge difference in meaning. And, helpful little person that I am, I like to try to help.

Trouble is that not everyone appreciates that help. Sometimes it’s not even recognised as such. It’s regarded as criticism. Or worse. I have been accused of being pedantic.

And it made me wonder. Is giving of my professional knowledge to help out in a confusing situation so sensitive since it’s all about language, and we all use language? Whereas this is not the case with many other professional fields, and we more readily accept other people’s input in those fields?

It reminded me of an incident from some time ago. A lady at the front of a line at a counter in a chemist’s was enquiring about cough sirups. She was about to choose one that the sales person recommended, when someone behind her recommended a different one. He added that he was a doctor (in other words, he knew what he was talking about). Both the sales person behind the counter and the customer were happy with the professional’s input and the lady heeded his advice.

It’s probably not a perfect comparison, but I wonder if it’s easier to more readily accept a doctor’s input because his is not a field that we feel we are too familiar with, whereas we have all used language all our lives and treat input in that field as criticism and take it personally.

To be honest, I’m not really sure what it is, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that not only should I bite my tongue in these situations, but when on the Internet I should also restrain my fingers and keep them from typing when I see confusing linguistic errors. Apparently people would rather make those mistakes uncorrected. Well, I’ll try to let them. Hopefully that’ll be seen to be more helpful.

Delightfully Still

The waiter carefully places the bottle on our table, omitting to ask if the vintage is acceptable. He doesn´t even bother to open the bottle, let the contents be sampled, or otherwise invite any expression of approval or disapproval. He doesn´t have to, for he knows he has made an excellent choice.

The setting is not a dinner table at a restaurant. The waiter is not a waiter. The bottle is not a wine bottle. And I am not taking anyone out today. I am an interpreter in an interpreters’ booth. The waiter is my fellow interpreter. And the bottle is a container for mineral water. It just so happens that my colleague´s suit and tie, the way he holds the bottle, and the posh label remind me of a restaurant setting. But other than that, there is hardly any comparison with a restaurant situation. In fact, the text on the bottle reminds me of something completely different than a dinner. The manufacturer (if you can use that word at all for a company that pumps water from springs and puts it in bottles), Hildon, used an interesting description for the kind of water they put in this particular bottle. In elegant lettering the label reads: DELIGHTFULLY STILL.

That struck me as unusual. You see all kinds of descriptions, usually in one word – still, sparkling, fizzy, carbonated. But delightfully still was new to me. It made me think. There is something about the word still that is attractive all by itself. It reminds one of peace and quiet, silence, softness. But the word delightfully adds a whole new dimension to it. Instead of still being just the opposite of carbonated, with the word delightfully in front of it, it suddenly becomes a suggestion that instead of leaving something out, you are getting something extra. Like the chance to enjoy, to take pleasure in the stillness of this spring water from England.

Apparently stillness really is something we can relish. Not just in water, but in many things. Still waters are safer than rough seas. Still tongues make wise heads. Stillness is soothing, calming, pacifying. I suppose we all need some stillness now and then. Some peace, some being away from the rat race of life. Some quiet pause amid the noise pollution of modern society.

And heaven knows we need things to be delightfully still. There is simply too much noise, too much hustle and bustle. Modern life asks ever more of us. We need to do more, be away more, travel more, be available more – yes, even day and night, it seems. Has anyone ever said to you: Why didn´t you have your mobile phone on? Sounds familiar, doesn´t it? You are expected to be available at all times, to jump to attention whenever or wherever horrible, simplified electronic renderings of familiar tunes and melodies rudely interrupt you in whatever activity it was you were engaged in. In my own country I´ve heard people complaining that you cannot really go anywhere without hearing traffic. But nowadays you can even hardly go anywhere anymore without hearing people making phonecalls. A whole new kind of noise pollution!

No, really, it may just be a bottle label, but “Delightfully Still” really appeals to me. I like it a lot. And, although I don´t think it motivates me to just drink Hildon spring water from now on, I do mean to find more things in life that are just as delightfully still.

Christmas Cards & Letters

In this age of travel and technology, with people moving just about anywhere for jobs and things, Christmas cards are often replaced by family newsletters and e-mails. We do so want to let other people know how we’re all doing. Even if we haven’t seem them in a while, or maybe especially if we haven’t seen them for a long time. And so the family newsletter was created.

In the past just a long, written epistle, delivered by your postman, it has now evolved at least into a computer printout, often accompanied by some photos, or a colour printout of family snaps. But more often nowadays you’ll get an e-mail, complete with lots of attachments – mostly unedited, uncompressed digital family snaps that fill up your e-mailbox.

I used to think they were nice to read, and I welcomed receiving and reading them. After all, these family newsletters, whether or not they arrived by e-mail, would tell me how faraway friends, colleagues and relatives were doing. But over the past few years I’ve come to hate them.

Why? Well … sigh! It’s like this.The average letter or e-mail goes like this: “We’ve had a wonferful year. Tom had a promotion, Dick graduated cum laude from university, and Harry skipped two years at college and is now the youngest in his class. Mary is only two, but she’s already playing three musical instruments, and is moving on to the next.” Oh, they may mention some kind of mishap or misfortune here or there, but generally these letters are one success story after the other.

Now, that’s all nice for them, of course. But I’m afraid that my life looks different. I don’t want to read about promotions when I’ve  been struggling financially, with no prospect of ever getting better-paid work than I have now, and have had for the past twenty years or so. I don’t want to know about graduations when my wife and I have discovered that my children all have … well, let’s call them “special needs”. They’re wonderful, sweet children, but … well, it’s all just so hard. So I don’t want to hear about diplomas when even my eldest hasn’t been able to get just one (yet), and I have no idea if or when that will ever happen. And I certainly don’t want to hear about the child prodigies in the family, for exactly the same reason! Reading these things only makes me sad. And I hate that feeling. If it was an occasional occurrence, feeling like that, it would be acceptable. But … oh well, you get the picture.

So, successful people of the world, and especially successful people I know: Do me a favour – please just send me an old-fashioned Christmas card (the paper kind – or, if you want to be modern, a digital Christmas card). You know the kind I mean: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Signed, your friend.” Good enough for me, believe me! I might even reciprocate and send you one as well, probably with a very similar text. It will work a lot better for me, believe me!

Supersizing

When our family started considering taking a dog – something I had wanted for a long time – we bought some books to find out how we could best take care of the new family pet. My parents had dogs, so I was familiar with the concept of taking care of a canine companion, but we wanted to be sure we knew all that was necessary. And sure enough, there was a lot of information there that I either never knew before, or had forgotten since my childhood.

One of the subjects we came across, was food. You’re not supposed to feed your dog food for humans. I know they’d like to eat what we eat. Because, actually, part of that tv commercial for Kibbles ‘n Bits is true: What your dog would really like, is what you’re eating! (I love that commercial, by the way, when that dog pulls up a chair and sits at the table with the rest of the family. Cute and funny!)

Take chocolate, for instance. That’s like poison for a dog. Not good for him at all. And dogs aren’t supposed to get starch – you know, the stuff potatoes and pasta are made up of – because that’s bad for them too. I read on – there was more good counsel about a dog’s nutrition. And as I read those books, it began to dawn on me that many of the suggestions in the book were just general health and nutrition tips, most of them not for dogs especially – they would look good in a diet book for humans too!

That was years ago. We now have a dog, Ashley, and we try to treat her sensibly, living by most of the wise words we read in those books. We even follow the instruction to watch her weight. But in winter she can’t swim (we have a river nearby, and she loves to swim, but to her disappointment we try not to allow that when it’s very cold), she tends to get a bit heavier. We then promptly adjust her diet, giving her less food.

After we had done that the first time, I thought: Strange – we take excellent care of the dog’s diet and health, but neglect our own! We don’t feed the dog potatoes or pasta, because it makes her fat. We, on the other hand, eat all the potatoes and pasta meals we like, and think it’s normal when we gain weight. That’s ridiculous! It’s exactly the wrong way around! Shouldn’t we watch our own weight and health more carefully? Of course we should! We should be more responsible in our choice of food and other things that determine our health.

And that’s exactly the problem I have with that man who took, I think, McDonalds and Burger King to court. He sued them because they hadn’t informed him that their junk food was bad for him. Partly I agree with him. Yes, the stuff they’ve been serving there hasn’t always been very healthy – and a lot of it still isn’t. And yes, they should have made it clear exactly what was in their food, and how that affects your health. (I never knew, for instance, that sugar was one of the main ingredients of the buns McDonalds uses. That definitely would have made me eat less cheeseburgers!) But – it doesn’t relieve anyone from the responsibility to watch out for his own health, to check what he’s eating and make any diet adjustments necessary for his physical well-being. I mean, even if you don’t know the exact ingredients of the meals they serve at fast food outlets, you can pretty much guess that it might not be wise to say “yes” when asked if they should supersize your meal for you, right? Although I must admit that film-maker Morgan Spurlock’s experiment to live on McDonalds’ food for a month and always say “yes” when asked if he wanted to supersize his meal, was a very interesting one. His doctor was not quite so amused, and he did put on 25 pounds in a month, so I suppose he proved his point: fast food (and especially a lot of fast food) is very bad for your health. I mean, even McDonalds say their food should [only] be eaten as “part of a balanced diet” (as stated in the adverts they put in British papers after Spurlock’s film, “Super Size Me”).

Since the court case I mentioned, fast food chains have been trying to create a healthier image for themselves and their menu options. And they have made at least a few good adjustments, I have to admit. There is a wider selection in salads, you can buy bags of fruit, there’s yoghurt here and there, you can get all kinds of low-carb choices. In short, there’s a lot you can do to prevent your visit to a fast food outlet from being an unhealthy one. (Probably the best way to do that, is skip that visit altogether, but I don’t suppose the masses would want to go so far as to abstain altogether. And to be honest, I have a hard time avoiding them completely as well…)

But there’s one thing you should remember. You can still buy junk food there. You can still get fat by making the wrong choices. You can still ruin your health. And it’s not McDonalds, or Arby’s, or Arctic Circle, or Pizza Hut, or Burger King, or Wendy’s, that’s supersizing people. It’s the people themselves. It’s you and I who make that choice.

So let’s stop treating ourselves worse than dogs, and let’s start feeding ourselves healthily, like we feed our dogs – like the dogs in those books I bought. And let’s start being sensible! I know my body would appreciate it, and I´m sure yours would too.

Now, where are those scales. I have quite a few pounds to lose…

Flying and Landing

I love flying. Not as a pilot. I’m just a passenger – an economy passenger – but I love to fly.

I’ve got quite addicted to take-offs, landings, and great views from on high. And it’s the most fun when someone else is paying for it, of course. That only adds to the feeling that I can count myself lucky whenever I fly. Doesn’t always work, though. I have to pay for my own holiday flights, obviously. But sometimes I can fly for my work, and I enjoy those trips even more. Flying and being paid to do so is great!

But there are disadvantages, too. There always are. Every advantage has a disadvantage, or so they say. (Who’s “they”? I haven’t a clue. But it’s what “they” say, so I just quote my source as being “they”.)

Take jet-lag, for instance. Not so bad when you’re going west and gaining time, but it can be very tiring to go east. It always robs me of my general feeling of well-being, and gives me that rare zombie-like quality that I only get when I’ve been deprived of a lot of sleep, or when I’ve been flying east for thousands of miles. Or both, which is worse. A lot worse.

Anyway, one time I took a long trip by air, I discovered a whole new way to fly. I’d already left the plane and the airport. (So it’s not what you may think.) I had checked into my hotel in Salt Lake City, and was having a walk in the pleasant evening air. Of course, I was jet-lagged and tired. But that didn’t stop me from having a brisk walk – a very brisk walk. In fact, I was going at quite a pace. And then my foot had a disagreement with an uneven section of the concrete pavement (“sidewalk”, if we’re going to get this geographically and culturally correct – after all, I was in the United States at the time). Since I was walking fast, this sent me … flying. I have no other word for it. But it wasn’t the flying that was the problem. It was the landing. Since, contrary to airplanes – which have landing gear and all that – I had nothing to roll along the pavement with (the sidewalk, sorry – I keep reverting back to the Queen’s English, old habits die hard), I landed on the concrete with a big thud, and then, due to my speed, slid on for a distance.

You will understand that this is not a very healthy thing to do. It didn’t really help the condition of my trousers (or pants, if you will), nor did it much good for my leg and knee. Big, deep wound – and very dirty. Now, I have relatives in that city. In-laws, to be precise. Not that this difference matters to me. Family is family … But, anyway, my brother-in-law had some kind of prickly fluid that cleaned out my wound quite nicely, and even removed dead skin cells in the process. But a day and an x-ray later I was walking with a walking-stick (okay, a cane – I was going to stay with the local lingo, right?). Not a nice way to see Salt Lake City, I can tell you that! I had had plans to rent a car and see the state on my weekends off (they can make me work over there, but they can’t take away my weekends off!), but my leg just wouldn’t cooperate. I spent more time in my hotel room than I had planned. But I saw a lot of Law & Order re-runs – I suppose one has to see the advantages to everything. And on my flight back I got a lot of consideration from the flight attendants (does anyone know what happened to that good old term “stewardesses”?) and other passengers – it does help when you walk in, looking like a cripple!

Anyway, what’s my point? Good question. Should there be a point to a blog?

Well, I suppose I could argue that there are different ways of flying and landing, and that one is more pleasant than the other. Yes. Sounds good. Let’s stick to that conclusion.

So if you’re flying – be careful how you land! And have a good flight…