I Rarely Watch Movies, So Why Did “The Whole Wide World” Find Me?
Some Things Are Looking for Us
There was a cosmic download, and I strongly felt my internal system receiving it.
It was a knowing, a very clear knowing: Some things are looking for us.
They are finding us.
They know us by our names.
No matter where we are, they don’t lose track; they don’t lose the memory.
Maybe they are tied to us with an invisible thread.
When I received the complete download, the notification I read was: There is a “Calling” on its way to you.
A code with snippets of cosmic information was finding its way to me.
It looked for a place inside me where it could firmly take hold.
I did not instantly understand and acknowledge it. Initially, it felt like a different setting.
I received it but could not process it right away.
But the beauty of “Calling” is that it does not knock once.
It keeps knocking until we open the door and welcome it.
It introduces itself, explains its purpose and sits with us while we begin to pick up its messages.
And the most mysterious part of the calling is that we may think our calling will stop showing up once we’ve become certain about it, but it silently waits and monitors us all the way.
And for any brief moment, if we ever lose our focus on it, it again meets us through synchronicities and epiphanies.
I knew something had found me, something was for me, something had chosen me.
Writing.
But I did not feel competent, capable and worthy of the calling.
Neither my childhood nor my youth had any inclination for writing.
An unknown love for words and a fascination with humans was all I remembered I carried.
Perhaps that was the seed for the calling.
To understand humans, weave together their innermost complexities and give them an expression through words- this was something I was getting closer to.
Once the Calling becomes known, there is no looking back, even if moving forward comes with no guarantees. It becomes a sacred union for life, and any separation or distance on the way is simply an illusion.
And Then, One Night, I Found The Whole Wide World
While I was somewhere on my way, holding my calling, taking it forward, some days doubting it and other days taking its responsibility, one night brought something different to me.
I had completed Emma by Jane Austen.
A difficult read, written in the 1800s. It took me around 3 months to complete it.
The night I completed it, I started searching for its adaptation, if any, and I did find one.
Made up my mind to watch it on some weekend.
Then I scrolled the YouTube interface for no purpose. While I was scrolling, a thumbnail of an English movie caught my attention.
The whole wide world.
In that glance at the thumbnail, something drew me to it, and I felt a very strong urge to click it.
The movie started, and without any plans to watch it, something in that moment glued me to it.
I had no idea why I had clicked the movie in the first place until a scene struck me.
A man named Clyde told his good friend Novalyne that his writer friend Bob was coming over. Novalyne was excited and wanted to meet Bob.
The word “Writer” used for the protagonist was what turned me on.
I could feel the hankering to continue watching it.
I too wanted to see Bob, the Writer.
Clyde introduced Bob to Novalyne:
“Bob is the greatest pulp writer in the whole wide world”.
And Bob said to Novalyne:
“Clyde tells me you write”.
To this, Novalyne replied:
“I try”.
That’s it, I knew the movie was for me.
Hearing the word “writer” a couple of times was enough to keep watching it.
I Wasn’t Watching a Movie. I Was Watching a Writer.
The instinct wasn’t to watch the movie but to feel the writer in it.
Before I proceeded, I paused to acknowledge the profound synchronicity I had witnessed in that moment.
My writing was not in full swing in recent days. It was challenging to have uninterrupted long stretches of writing sessions.
And once you lose the momentum, coming back to such deep work where all the mental nerves are at work is far from possible.
Somewhere, I had been feeling the pain and dissatisfaction of not being able to write as religiously as I wanted to.
In my head, the picture I always romanticised about writing was the one where I would be locked in a room, with no one allowed to enter, and write until I felt intoxicated by it.
And whenever this picture did not become a reality, the days became bland and subdued.
So when I watched Bob play his role as a writer in the movie, I found that a conversation had begun between me and my mind.
How was it possible to come across a movie that was such a fit for the inner noise I was in, the dissatisfaction and remorse of not giving writing as much time as I wanted?
My mind was repeatedly in surprise, perceiving it as a cosmic sign.
A message that Bob is here to show you what a dedicated writer looks like.
A writer who lives life like each one of us, living with his parents, a busy home and somewhere along the way falling in love as well.
But his writing is rarely compromised. It is always in the front seat.
He spends most of his time with his companion, the typewriter.
There was something very strong about Bob’s character – his grit, his love and crazy passion for writing.
The movie was packed with conversations about writing, and I started to see Bob as a writer rather than just the hero.
The movie was a love story, but in every scene I saw Bob never dilute his love for writing.
Every time he stepped into his room and sat at his writing desk, the whole world seemed not to exist.
His space, the entire vibe of the room, was so intriguing that it sparked a new freshness in my love for writing.
The discontinuities and breaks I had been going through in my writing journey, Bob came to close the gap and revive in me the spirit I needed to keep going despite life happening to me.
“The whole wide world” wasn’t just a movie for me; it was a sign, an epiphany reminding me of the cosmic download I once had of the Calling.
It was here to affirm that writing was my sacred art in this whole wide world.
Bob not only rekindled the zeal, but I also strongly identified with his character.
There were scenes where I saw myself in his character. The feelings Bob expressed in those scenes looked like a replica of exactly how I experience it when it comes to writing.
I could not walk past those scenes until I rewound several times to watch them and feel them deeply.
I even recorded a scene that really hit close to home.
Scene:
Novalyne, the woman Bob was falling in love with, is speaking to Bob over a call.
When Bob asked what her plans for the weekend were, she mentioned the Christmas party that a gentleman was throwing. Novalyne wanted Bob to join her for the party.
Bob turned serious and silent at this proposal.
In the next moment, he turned it down.
The rejection made Novalyne upset.
When she queried, Bob replied, “I don’t have time for some tea-drinking, cookie-pushing party.
And Novalyne blurted out, “That’s not what it is, you bastard”.
The word Bastard felt like a hot iron, and Bob lost his cool.
He boiled with anger and told Novalyne that if he listened to her, his writing would go to hell.
When she still insisted on coming, Bob could not help but get worse.
I still cannot forget what he then said.
“I’ll see those sons of bitches in hell before I make one of their parties. You wanna learn to be a writer, I’ll show you what it takes”
And then he banged the phone in a fit of anger.
I could feel every ounce of Bob’s angst.
The inner battle that every passionate amateur writer goes through to protect their space, time and love for writing. They want to socialise, be available to their family and friends, but not at the cost of writing.
The struggle is real because it isn’t just about going out for that one hour or talking to a friend to listen to their daily rants, then resuming writing. It costs more than that.
Becoming physically available for writing is not enough. It takes time to come back mentally as well into the right mind space for writing.
Sometimes conversations end, but they still play in your head, and unless they reach a dead end, a blank screen for a writer becomes a challenge.
Being someone who has had such experiences firsthand, I could understand the pain behind Bob’s anger.
After he disconnected the call, the anger dissipated, and remorse took its place. He broke into tears, and the very thing he was trying to protect felt even more damaged.
This is the dark side of loving a passion more than anything; the world rarely understands it.
Bob did not love Novalyne any less, but his love for writing was irreplaceable. And this is where one needs to balance things without letting any of them topple.
I felt his anger; I also felt the pain of seeing anger control him.
There was a writer on one side and a man in love with his woman on the other.
The whole wide world, somewhere inside me, was making a subtle but profound impression. It was assuring me that the muse constantly waits for me in my writing room.
I may abandon the muse, but it always lurks like a thief, only to find me again, rob my attention and get it back onto the blank screen.
The movie drew me closer to what life had conspired for me.
Bob arrived when all I most wished for in this whole wide world was to immerse myself in writing.
He not only reminded me of the seed but also filled me with an inner knowing of the tree it was destined to grow into.
The movie did not end on a happy note as Bob killed himself when he was told about his mother’s incurable ailment. But despite the pain of losing Bob, there was joy in being chosen to receive a synchronicity that braced me up for the calling I was here for.
The dialogues lingered in my mind for weeks, and the essence stayed.
My intuitive instinct was loud and clear about the message the movie was here to give me.
I picked the best of Bob and wrought it into my spirit, knowing that it would blend well and nurture the seed I had found.
The Dialogues That Stayed With Me
There were lines that I not only resonated with but felt a whole different world of a writer within them.
- “I decided the only way I could keep from working was to start writing.”
Bob intends to say that he had tried other jobs and hated them until he realised writing was the only way he could live life. I was exactly in the same mental space.
Having left my job, I had given ten long years of my life; I knew, just like Bob did, that only writing could keep me from working.
- “I get to stay at home. I’m the boss. The typewriter’s the employee. No arguments.”
This was something like someone speaking my heart out loud.
No matter how much the blank screen haunts or becomes challenging, there is always a sigh of relief at not feeling the weight and pressure of a boss, office politics and doing something that feels empty to your soul.
The screen is my territory; no one other than me has authority over it.
The outside world has rules, expectations and an undeniable control over me that makes it suffocating, even if it is easier than writing.
- Novalyne looks at a house and tells Bob:
“I thought about the yarns that you write. Your dream. The dream that brought you over to my house that day.”
The word dream separates Bob from a man who only writes and portrays a dreamer who found real joy in words and stories.
Writing isn’t work for Bob; it is the time when he feels the magic at play.
Some stories don’t inspire us to become someone else; they arrive to show us who we already are.
I didn’t find Bob Howard’s story because I was looking for a story about a writing journey. I found it at a time when I was beginning to understand that writing wasn’t something I merely wanted to do. It was something I had been trying, for years, to make room for.
Bob doesn’t seem to treat writing as an accessory to life. Writing is the architecture of his life. His typewriter is his workplace, his refuge, his territory, and perhaps the only place where the world makes sense on his terms.
Novalyne found Bob’s world through writing.
I found Bob’s world through a movie.
And perhaps, the movie found me because I had already begun to find myself through writing.
