Marley and Life

In the movie Marley and Me, husband and wife John and Jenny have “the world’s worst dog”, and they do ordinary things in a beautifully unordinary way.In the end it’s not so much about what the dog Marley does,as it is about what happens with Marley in the midst.It’s Marley who makes you cry at the end,but it’s who Marley leaves behind that make the movie worthwhile.

  

Jenny(Jennifer Aniston) and John(Owen Wilson) don’t cut their marriage short,they don’t seek an artificial end to their troubles;with all their energy and dreams they winsomely meet life in its face. Sebastian avoids commitment and chases the new,John and Jenny each take a deep breath and trudge through the ordinary together. Sebastian finds himself always looking wistfully around him without a story to tell. John and Jenny discover scrapbooks of unexpected celebrations. 

As Jenny said in the movie, “Life is where we are”...not where we planned on being,not where we think things are better.

So Marley and Me is about endurance and the celebration of life. About waiting with both patience and expectation;and enjoying the wait.The movie’s adventures are not without realistic sadness;but it is sadness because something did indeed come rightfully to an end. Not twisted grief over something cut short.

It is sad.Marley dies. But it is the best kind of sadness one could hope for.

And so, perhaps,it is really the end of the beginning.