Is Love Enough?
The Adjustment Bureau.
Probably one of my favourite movies.
Underrated. Unexpected. Unconventional. Especially with its casting of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as paramours.
Uncommon, too, in how much it enriches me, every time I watch it — and each time in a different way.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a woman, lately. I’ve been upholding the role of a feminist since before there was a term for it; but frankly, looking at the current state of affairs, I no longer feel comfortable calling myself one. In fact, I’ve been rethinking all the things that I think I am, and really questioning how important or necessary proclamations of who I am are. Is it not enough for me to know? Why must what I say or do be constantly weighed in the balance of who I am?
We get so hyper-fixated (and most times toxically so) on our principles these days, that it’s all that anyone wants to know about someone, and tell the world about. It is not enough that I am me, everyone also wants to know what I believe in, what my politics is, whether I am pro-life or pro-choice. These things do serve a purpose, in as much that they become the foundation of our belief systems. But to assume that two people that do not see eye-to-eye on something, cannot in any conceivable way still have a strong friendship, is absurd! When did friendships become about politics?
I promise me bringing all of this up will make sense at a later point in this article.
But for now, coming back to the movie…
The Adjustment Bureau is about an aspiring Senator, David Norris, who’s fate in the upcoming elections changes due to a chance-meeting with a young ballet dancer, Elise Sellas, that inspires him to go off-script on the night of his big speech, thereby gaining him overnight popularity. David cannot forget Elise, and as luck would have it, he meets her again the next morning. But he is ‘not supposed to’ have met her again… and that is what the movie is about.
I happened to watch the film again last week… and in the five or six days that followed, my musings about the different themes in the film turned into a rather chaotic whirlwind!
At first, I kept coming back to the exchange between David and Thompson, where he explains why David and Elise can’t be together.
David: Tell me why I can’t be with Elise. Because the last guy didn’t know.
Thompson: Meeting Elise at The Waldorf three years ago wasn’t chance, that was us. We knew she’d inspire you to give that speech. That speech that brought you back from the edge of oblivion, and overnight made you the frontrunner in this coming election. (…) David, you can change the world. But that doesn’t happen, if you stay with her.
David: Why do you people care who I love?
Thompson: It’s not about her; it is about you. What being with her does to you. (…) In small doses, Elise was the cure. But in large doses, she rubs off on you. The President can’t be a lose canon.
On the outset, let me state that this movie does not pass the Bechdel Test; so that in itself is a major flaw. However, I am the kind of person who does not require every movie she watches to pass the Bechdel Test, so I still think it is a great movie.
But what took me by utter surprise this time around is — as I played the above scene in my head over and over again, I wondered to myself:
“Why must the Elises of the world suffer, because the Davids cannot find within themselves enough self-control to not become lose canons?”
If it is a man, somehow it is always so that the woman is the problem, and hence eliminating her from the equation fixes the problem, whatever that problem might be. Women are seen as the weak spot of men, their Achilles’ Heel, and if a man is to achieve great things, he is supposed to not let any woman get too close. He is not to get sentimental, or soft… because that is seen as a threat to his professional success. Why is the man never tasked with finding his own equilibrium within, so that he may have a wonderful relationship with the woman, without letting her ‘rub off on him’ till he trashes his entire career? Why is the solution always… leaving the woman?
Elise never asked him to change his speech. She merely offered a perspective, gave a suggestion. David chose his own words. And yet, it is somehow Elise who must suffer being ghosted, because David can’t seem to control himself around her. Like, what? And more importantly, WHY?
Of course, I am sure if that is the kind of guy David is, that Elise is then better off finding that out now, and choosing to not be with him, than five or ten years into their relationship, when they are probably married and with kids. But what really aches is the fact that Elise is never given that choice in the first place… the choice is made for her. By David. On his own. Without so much as even informing her, let alone discussing it. Completely robbing Elise of her agency.
… and then a couple of days later I found myself thinking about another exchange in the movie, that comes up at a much later point.
Harry: Thompson was lying when he said you couldn’t be with Elise because she brings out your reckless side.
David: Then why? Why do they care so much?
Get Mru’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Harry: Because she is enough, David.
Oh, how this line sucker-punches me in the guts every single time! The tryst between man’s desire and destiny! And now this is where it gets complicated because… why must the two always be at odds? And why should someone else decide which takes precedence?
Harry: If you have her, you won’t need to fill that void inside of you with applause and votes and dreams of one day making it to the White House.
Shouldn’t David be allowed to choose between Elise and the White House? Especially because only moments later he admits that, “Before I met Elise, that’s all I cared about. I don’t even notice it now. I can’t stop thinking about her.” Would you rather have a depressed man running a country, or one who truly wants to run it because he cares, and not just because someone tweaked his destiny every few years to put him on the path?
But I got significantly more adamantly stuck on another train of thought than the one I just talked about, and that is –
What if this is why some of us are always unlucky in love?
I don’t think for every person the choice is between love and becoming President or Prime Minister. For some of us, the battles might be smaller, the choices might be more personal — love, and healing; love, and self-respect; love, and independence. Love, and self-love. Love, and financial success.
If I had settled down with any of my past paramours, I most certainly would not have become the highly skilled writer, gifted healer, remarkable tarot-card reader, effective empowerment coach that I am today. For I would have been far too busy being… something else. The duties and responsibilities of my relationship might have had left me with very little time to be anything or anyone else.
Perhaps that is my perception because I am a woman. Perhaps I would still have had time to achieve all these things along with being married if I were a man. Especially so, because women are often sold ‘marriage’ as being ‘enough’; we are preferred to not want anything more out of life, and the other side of this situation becomes the men’s responsibility — by never allowing ‘family’ to be ‘enough’ for them.
If it is somehow incorrect for Elise to ever be enough for David, if somehow, he is supposed to want to do more with his life, and everyone around him are counting on it… why should a marriage be enough for me?
Having said that though… to push a woman to be something more than a dutiful and doting wife when being a support system for her partner and her family is all she wants to do because it is her most authentic calling, or because that is all she genuinely wants for herself in this life, simply because it is in vogue right now, is also so cruel.
And this is where what I said in the beginning of the article connects.
With so many bloody terms coming up for every little thing that we are or wish to be, and every remark being turned into some ‘-ist’ offence — classist, racist, ageist, sexist, ableist — we are making the world an increasingly angular and lonely place for us to live in, with every identity becoming more and more obscure, until we reach a point where we are all just going to be living in singular isolated pods, counting ourselves a community unto ourselves.
For a very long time, I wanted to marry young and have two kids. Then, that dream changed. But now I sometimes wonder if the dream truly changed, or if I gave up on it because I was shamed for not wanting more.
It is like parents being mad at their kids when they grow up entitled, when they were the ones who wanted to provide for the kids in a manner that they themselves were never provided for. You work hard to give me things, and are then mad at me for taking and enjoying those things? Do you think our ancestors look at us and think we are being lazy, and greedy… or do you think they rejoice at the fact that no one in their lineage is ever going to go to bed hungry?
I didn’t become a writer and a healer and an empowerment coach just to pass time. But I think if I were to marry again or have a life-partner in any sort of capacity, I might want to cut back from work and just enjoy having someone else look after my every need, while I enrich their life. And yet, I wonder sometimes about how I am going to get past the guilt of not having a career, or the shame that I might be subjected to by other ‘Yas Queen Slay Bitch Boss Babe Badass SheEO Mother’s out there.
But is this exactly why love keeps eluding me? Because the work I am doing is important and it is significant for me to get started with and perhaps get done with it now rather than later?
My life, the way it looks right now, was not entirely mindfully crafted by me through well-thought-out decisions… some facets are acts of commission, others of omission. But people are still going to look at my life and think of me a certain way. I do believe for the work I am doing to be important — maybe not as much as running a country, some may argue lesser than, some may argue more. But I know for a fact that I would not have done any of it had my life been happier, had I been more content.
Maybe I am yet to evolve. Maybe I am still the kind of person for whom love is enough. Maybe I just want to know it is possible for me. Maybe I want it to serve as a safety net. I don’t know, I am not sure…
What I do know, though, is this…
That it is a terrible idea to let the world decide what is enough for you, or what isn’t or shouldn’t be.
The reason The Adjustment Bureau thought David was going to turn into a lose canon around Elise is because they never really looked at Elise’s book. Maybe she would have lost all interest in David if he had decided that she was enough, and that would have perhaps made David strive harder in the next election, for the sake of Elise’s love and happiness, and then they could have had a perfect ending; desire and destiny, perfectly aligned like railway tracks. The movie does end on an ambiguous note, doesn’t it? Does David run for the White House? Do he and Elise end up together for life? No? So, The Adjustment Bureau killed David’s father and brother off for no fucking reason then?
Don’t ever let anyone tell you what is or should be enough for you. And when you find out for yourself, don’t ever let anyone make you change it so that it suits their narrative and helps them tag you better, and decide whether to like you, invite you to their house, let you play with their kid, or not.
You decide.
Is love enough?
You. Decide.
