It probably can’t. It may help you ponder the kind of person you hope to become, and it might even help you orient yourself towards the next few baby steps you take in this life, but decide what you want to do with your life? Not likely. None of us ever really decides ‘what to do with our lives,’ as if that were some golden tablet plucked out of the heavens. But that won’t stop us from frantically stressing.
As a recent college graduate who does indeed stress about such a question, I recently rediscovered the modern classic that is Good Will Hunting as I spent Thanksgiving anxiously deliberating my future — and realized it has a lot to offer.
Although the film is perhaps most famous for pulling heart strings, it is also a deep exploration of courage and humility. It forces viewers to question their vocational priorities and even invites reflection upon why we choose to seek, or avoid, outward success. If you haven’t seen this 1997 drama, and you’re stressed about what to do with your life, you should stop reading now and go watch it before I start dropping spoilers.
Dr. Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams, seems to have chosen a path of humility. Contrasted with his former roommate Prof. Gerald Lambeau, who has won the prestigious Fields Medal for mathematics and teaches at MIT, Sean is a failure. He neglected a great gift for math and chose instead to teach psychology at a local community college. Lambeau constantly berates Sean for sliding off into insignificance, while Sean maintains it was a “conscious choice” to pursue a way of life that makes him proud. By the end of the movie, most viewers will have fallen in love with Sean’s humble kindness and disregard of prestige.
Yet, while we may not dream of Fields Medals or Wall Street management positons, many aspiring college graduates secretly fear such a mundane role as Sean’s. Instead, we have an eye for power (“influence,” we call it). We want to be leaders, not unknown practitioners. Of course, we cheer and applaud Sean against the arrogant Gerald Lambeau. But then we all too quickly slip back to dreaming of widespread fame and significance. Such a slippage suggests the importance of pondering Sean’s humble kindness — even when a portrait of a human life fully lived grips our imaginations, we still struggle to digest its fundamental ethos.
On the other hand, Will Hunting, played by a rookie blond actor named Matt Damon, cautions against a different trap. An orphan from South Boston and a janitor, Hunting impresses Lambeau when he starts solving proofs that confound the best and the brightest at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We also watch Hunting challenge the snobbery of Harvard grad students, peddle Marxist political theory to the NSA, and casually read books at a page per second pace.
But despite his obvious genius, Will Hunting would prefer to work construction, drink with his buddies, and spend the rest of his life watching Patriots games with his best friend, than to develop his gifts and pursue lucrative job offers. On a practical level, Hunting commits to loving his friends and keeping his nose to the grindstone. He glorifies getting an education at a public library over and against the pretentious babble of a Harvard graduate education. Like Sean, he rejects outward displays of success. So is he, too, a model of humility? Isn’t his commitment to hard, manual labor an expression of simple servitude?
As Sean unravels Hunting’s emotional barriers in therapy, we learn that Hunting’s lifestyle is anything but humble. Rather, a family history of abuse and abandonment has yielded a young man fearful of any risk that might jeopardize his own high view of himself or his precious few dependable relationships. Hunting neglects his potential and coasts on his brilliance not out of humility, but from a fear of failure. While both Sean and Hunting reject outward success, only Sean’s lifestyle is truly humble.
Thus, Good Will Hunting patiently teaches an uncomfortable truth: the rejection of outward success can as easily be the expression of an arrogant insecurity and an undisciplined laziness as it can be the manifestation of genuine humility.
In my own life, I often find myself secretly desiring fame and influence, even as I aspire to reject success for success’ sake. Sean’s sincere commitment to his local context is an encouraging reminder that life as a teacher, or counselor, or friend is equally as meaningful and valuable as the greatest platforms of worldly success.
Yet, at the same time, my rejection of power games and my attempt to love my local neighbors and friends can easily slip into Will Hunting-like behavior. What began as love begins to look more like comfort and fear.
Like Will Hunting, I fear failure. If I try my very best– whether on a paper or a job application – and fail, then I’ve truly failed. Such a failure would force me to reconsider my essential identity, at least insofar as my identity depends on my prowess as a student or employee. But if I never try my best, if I spend my hours drinking beers with my buddies, listening to their stories as we watch football games, then I can also keep that success card in my back pocket. At the end of the night, or at the end of a life, I can whisper to myself: “I could’ve done it if I’d tried. It’s not that I lacked the smarts or the talent. I just didn’t want to. It was, as Sean declares, my own ‘conscious choice.’”
So what’s the solution? How can we avoid both pursuing success as a means to power and shirking hard work under the auspices of an undisciplined humility? Is there some sort of middle way between the errant paths of selfish success and lazy insecurity? Perhaps simply to kinda’ pursue success, but kinda’ not? Or to try to win influence, but to be chill about it? To love those in the present, but keep your eyes scanning the horizons for better opportunities? Somehow, all these mixed options fall flat and feel insincere. There should be no half-assing the humility game.
Instead, I’d like to believe that it’s possible to reject my fears, risk failure, and work hard at cultivating my gifts – all while fostering an attitude of genuine humility. And I’d especially like to believe that can happen in a more meaningful way than, as Will Hunting eventually decides, “going to see about a girl.”
I’m not exactly sure how I – or really any of us – will accomplish this task. At its very most, Good Will Hunting can only help us stay attuned to the temptations on either side of the fine line of genuine humility. As we walk this line, we must look to a model sturdier than Will Hunting or Sean Maguire. We must look towards he who, with the utmost courage and profoundest humility, risked everything for the sake of all humanity.
Ryan Stewart is Online Assistant for Sojourners.
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