Liv in a Life Well-Lived

I watched a George Clooney film the other day, just in time to inspire me to root for him in the Oscars. Sadly, he did not win. But if I were George Clooney, just knowing that this film was made and I am in it will be enough too. The primary story is that of a man, initially an indifferent husband, whose wife met an accident and fell into a coma. While she was sleeping the sleep of the brain-dead, he learned that his wife was cheating on him; in fact, she was with her lover the day she had the accident. That’s just one of his problems. He is also a prima faci real estate lawyer who descended from Hawaiian royalty and is now handling the biggest sale and turnover of Kauai land to mainland developers. True, the latter storyline is a social commentary; the previous sounds like the dime-a-dozen melodrama. However, the movie was able to dip and dive between the two stories and turned it into a seamless whole. And in the midst of it all is Matt King (Clooney) who unravels before our ver...

I have fallen in love with a quiet man.  He never speaks, just sits in the same diner booth, motions for a cup of coffee and reads the newspaper. I have always brought him the prime roast beans, but I had a feeling he doesn’t care if I served him watered dredges. He only always drinks it half way through anyway. His entire concentration is on reading the newspaper. He sifts through it all from front page to last. Then, two or three hours later, he will leave ten dollars, more than enough to cover for the coffee and a big tip. Once I have tried giving him some change, but he only waved my offering away. That was the one time I saw him smile at me, and it changed me. It made me look forward to something in the day. Waitressing is a dull job and only pays as well as the next tip. Some days, I get all misers who would only leave a penny or none at all. But I could always count on the quiet man to come in around 2 o’clock – just after the lunch hour rush and a while before th...