"Life Is Not About the Number of Breaths You Take; It's the Number of Moments That Take Your Breath Away"

I took my wife to see both Hitch and Guess Who in a bargain theater double feature last night. Besides a thoroughly entertaining Sunday evening, we were both surprised by the number of good quotes in Hitch like the one in my title. Like most folks, I love to get credit for good work, and in return I try to give credit where credit is due, so I was hoping to find out where my title quote came from. A Google search of the above quote got 622 hits, most of which belonged to other bloggers and personal ads. One page quoted the line as far back as the year 2000, but without a better source I'm going to have to give the credit to Kevin Bisch, the screenwriter for the movie.

Meanwhile, today seems like a good day to talk about television, movies, and happy marriages, and hopeless romanticism. Smarter people than me will tell you that our lives and our minds are shaped by our surroundings moreso than by our genetics. (Yes, their argument tends to ignore predestination, fate, or anything else related to spirituality, but as an agnostic with atheistic tendencies, that really doesn't bother me one bit.) That's why I think Hollywood should make more movies like Hitch - movies that show that even in a modern society where people are born cynics, that romance is NOT dead; movies like Guess Who that show the importance of families regardless of the race, sex, or orientation of its individual members. I was lucky enough to learn much of what I know from watching my happily married parents and spending time with family, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think some of my views have been shaped by old-fashioned ideas that I learned while watching old movies and TV show reruns. Maybe even those kids who aren't lucky enough to live in a close family environment could learn something about how it's supposed to be from the characters on the other side of the screen.

Sure, I watched a lot of The A-Team and Miami Vice, Indiana Jones, and the Die Hard trilogy and I still do, but we're taught from day one that these action adventure shows aren't real. Anyone with a little common sense knows that you can't jump over the side of a skyscraper using only a hand-tied water hose to arrest your fall. I doubt many of us expect to find Miami detectives in linen suits with a crocodile for a housepet. Nobody tells us that the Huxtables aren't a real family, though. Nobody can tell me that Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years wasn't based on real-life junior high school exploits because I think I lived through several of them. They don't tell you these TV and movie families aren't real because while every house may not be just like Happy Days, there are a lot of households that are.

I grew up hearing that I watched too much TV, but I wonder if maybe we all should have watched more. The really good shows not only pick you up for the time it takes to make you watch them, but every time you stop to think of them, like the random times when my wife and I break into singing "The Elephant Love Medley" from Moulin Rouge while we're cleaning the house. Our friends look at us like we're weird, but I have to wonder if we're not a little happier, a little more carefree than some of our friends for realizing that life isn't so bad all the time.

You know what? I'm starting to ramble aimlessly, and that's a sign that I should have given up on this one a while ago. So in a nutshell, my point is this - Romance is not dead. Be good to your wife, your husband, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. Give them those moments to take their breath away, and you might find the same thing happens to you. Surprise them once in a while with breakfast in bed, or flowers for no reason. Stay up late talking to them just for the sake of spending time with them. Tell them you love them without expecting a response. And if you run out of ideas, look to movies and television for a quick pick-me-up and some old-fashioned ideas that your partner may never have heard of...

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Another good line from Hitch was a toast I know I've heard, yet I quote again here more for my own memory than anyone else's enjoyment:

"May you never lie, steal, cheat, or drink...
But if you should lay, then lay in the arms of someone you love;
If you should steal, steal her away from bad company;
If you should cheat, cheat death;
And if you should drink, then drink in the experiences that make life memorable."