Old Georgie

The SpellMaster

I loved the movie, Cloud Atlas. Everyone should watch it for the sheer enjoyment and the psychological/philosophical/spiritual messages it presents in narrative form. There are so many crystallizing moments. The scenes get better and better as the movie progresses and the meaning presents itself more clearly.

This film posits that we ascend or descend based on the virtue of the choices we make. Characters rise and fall via karmic reincarnation.

The ethical focus is on countervailing ethical options. Courageous choices lift a person into a higher station in their next life. Fear and coercion lower characters to sub-human entities who spread misery.

Finally the writers demonstrate that seemingly futile gestures of faith, mercy, courage and authenticity may not always save the person in this life, but that these noble acts serve as motivation and inspiration to souls far in the future. No good deed goes un-noticed.

One could spend pages analyzing so many scenes and moments and their implications. But perhaps my favorite is the movie’s climax. Tom Hanks’ character, Zachry, is a coward. His village is being attacked by brutes and instead of fighting valiantly, he hides. He is no mere coward, however. He is oppressed by the devil spirit, Old Georgie, played masterfully by Hugo Weaving.

In the film, we can’t tell if Old Georgie is a true devil, a hallucination or a sub-character in Zacchry’s psyche. Either way, he masterfully hobbles and confuses the weak character, whispering fear and despair. Sternly predicting the worst outcomes and overwhelming the innocent and pliable Zacchry in his colloquial brogue.

This moment really zapped me because it was well written, very intense and climactic in terms of cinematography. More so, the plot device served as the perfect metaphor for what our minds do to us to keep us ‘safe.’ This safety usually amounts to a lot of regret, when the spell of fear eventually wears off. We may wonder why we didn’t go for someone or something we wanted. When we didn’t believe in ourselves and we wondered how or why.

Old Georgie is a great externalization of the inner critic and other named and unnamed fear voices that can infect us and paralyze our lives.

I can recall countless moments where I’ve given in to fear because I thought the voice of fear was me or the voice of reason. This stance is often our default setting.

Because Old Georgie co-opts real insights and insinuates himself via worst-case-scenarios: to try and protect us but always from a limited, clutching, fear-based worldview.

Spoiler alert: Zachry eventually stands up to Old Georgie and finds his courage and saves the day. And he gets the girl and starts a family and tells the story to his grandkids around the fire, now an elderly man of wisdom.

We can and must wake up to our Old Georgie scenes, our opportunities to grow, to take our leaps of faith, regardless of the short-term outcomes.

There is a proclamation and a leap I’ve been meaning to take. One that scares me. It’s an inner leap, not a quit your job and move across the country type. It’s one I’ve written about and I know it’s right, but Old Georgie always finds a way of scaring me into a stuckness on this issue. He keeps telling me I’ll disappear if I let go of this one dream, this one thing that I don’t really have control over anyway. Such is the sophistication of these twisted survival mechanisms. These tools that have become inversions of their intended purpose.

Seek out your Old Georgie moments, situations and moments of truth. Recognize that the voice is not you. Thinking of Old Georgie as a stand-in for your fear or inner critic is a powerful move. Waking up in those moments is the way we make our leaps of faith. They often feel counter-intuitive. That’s because we are so used to that inner critic scaring us into inaction. What happens when we stop obeying?