On Not Being Schmidt
A David Owen Sermon
David Owen was a Methodist minister who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke prophetically to the powerful, cared for the lonely and poor, and embodied all the principles we Christians claim to cherish.
David preached this message at North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana on February 2, 2003.
- Philip Gulley
For more information on David Owen and, When You Don't Know the Length of the Race, visit the Owen Legacy Project by clicking below.
Over the past several weeks, a number of you asked me if I had seen the movie About Schmidt. Others said, “You need to see About Schmidt.” Looking back, I realize that those who recommended the film were mostly in their mid-fifties. No one twenty mentioned the film, nor did anyone in his or her seventies. It seemed to be of most interest to those approaching their sixties, especially those foreseeing retirement.
I read the novel About Schmidt by Louis Begley when it was published five or six years ago and found it mildly interesting, but I didn’t understand why there was so much interest in the movie. It turns out that the movie bears little resemblance to the book and is more entertaining. Moreover, it features an award-winning performance by Jack Nicholson, who plays the role of Warren Schmidt. In the film, Schmidt is one month younger than I now am and the story begins with his retirement from a large insurance company in which he was an assistant vice-president and an actuary who specialized in estimating risk. There are several humorous scenes in the film, such as when he leaps from a hot tub and flees the unwanted advances of a woman he does not view a desirable, but the film has several tragic scenes, as well. Even the comedy is sometimes painful to watch. In a recent interview, Jack Nicholson said of Schmidt, “He is a normal guy who over the course of the film has everything he leans on taken away from him piece by piece. It’s just one catastrophe after another.” We might view the film as a kind of Job story. I enjoyed the film and felt compassion for Schmidt, but a few days later I found myself thinking, “Life doesn’t have to be that way. The film shows life as it could be, but not as it must be.” That’s when I started talking back to Schmidt, thinking of several things I would want him to know, if I were his pastor.
Schmidt’s decline begins at his retirement dinner when he begins to feel that his many years as an actuary and an assistant vice-president lacked all value and meaning. In the face of that, I would want him to know that, given all that it takes, just reaching age sixty-six is, in itself, an achievement.
When I was a young man I read the novel Boys and Girls Together by William Golden, and there is one scene that I have remembered all these years. Young John Kirkaby was slated by his father to work in the family business, but that lacks excitement for John, so one day he tells his father that he is leaving the family business and is going off to New York City to be an actor. He says that he wants to find more meaning.
“Meaning?” his father erupts. “Whoever told you that life is supposed to have meaning? It’s not. I know. You’re just supposed to get through it. And that’s what I want written on my tombstone: P.T. Kirkaby. He got through it.”
I was shocked, at the time, by P.T.’s crustiness and lack of depth and stood solidly with the more adventurous John, but as my own life has moved through four more decades, I find that I have a growing appreciation of P.T. Now I know that there can be meaning and even heroism in “just getting through it.” It is an achievement, if we get through it.
I think of my mother in this regard. She died four years ago at ninety-one. By the standards of her time, hers was an ordinary life. “Nothing to write home about,” I can hear her say. She finished high school and then went to work as a stenographer in the office of a Milwaukee factory. She married my father when in her late twenties. He was a Prudential insurance agent whose highest education was the sixth grade. She left work when my sister and I were born. Her work, then, was in our home, where she also tended her invalid mother for several years. She also gave special care to me. My early childhood was marked with serious illnesses. Doctors said that I had six months to live before I was three. When Sally and I were in grade school, our mother was active as a Cub Scout den mother and in Brownies. She was active at church and in the PTA. Money was tight, so she went back to work when Sally and I were in junior high school. She got a job at a manufacturing plant near our home that made large pumps and presses. Their top-of-the-line item was a huge press that bailed junked cars, turning them into a compressed bundle of scrap metal that you would have found impossible to lift. She began in the engineering department as a tracer, for which she had no experience. A tracer assisted draftsmen by tracing their pencil drawings onto a sheet of coated linen with ink, using ruling pens and compasses. Later when I worked as a draftsman during summers while in college, I had a new appreciation for her ability to develop that skill. She moved from job to job within that company and came in time to be the president’s executive secretary. When that company closed, she moved across town to work in the office of a paper brokerage firm until her retirement. Before that, she was knocked down and injured at a bus stop by a mugger who stole her purse. Once in the middle of the night she received a phone call and a stranger’s voice said, “I want to rape you.” Even though she was very frightened, her professionalism as a secretary prevailed, and she answered, “Who’s calling, please?” We never allowed her to forget this.
What I marveled at during all those years is that my mother was a chronic asthmatic. So many times in the middle of the night she would be standing bent over a chair, wheezing heavily and gasping for air, yet in the morning she made her way to the bus stop for her ride to work. When she retired, my father’s Alzheimer’s disease was already evident. It worsened year by year. She kept him at home as long as she was able. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and his disease almost killed her. Even before my father died in a nursing facility, most of their savings were gone. She had had to spend their savings down in order to receive Title X funds for his costly care, and she moved then to federally subsidized housing. Fortunately, the final portion of her life was spent in a fine Christian facility, the Milwaukee Protestant Home, where she had many friends, some of whom went back to high school. There are many meaningful things that you could say about my mother, but one of them is, “She got through it.” Often it is heroic just to get through it.
I’d like to take a brief survey among those here today who are age fifty or above. If in your experience life has been easier than you expected, please raise your hand. If life has been more difficult than you expected, please raise your hand. I hope you who are younger will take note of the vote. It takes courage, wisdom, and gumption to get through it. I would want Schmidt to know there was meaning and value in his getting through it—in his working more than forty years to sustain himself and his family. Yet while it is true that in the end there is meaning in getting through it, it would be obscene if, when we were young, we said, “All I want from life is to get through it.”
Soon after his retirement, Schmidt sinks even further into depression when he realizes that the world of his work has quickly passed him by. He goes back to the office to see his successor, a young man with a recent MBA degree, just to see how things are going and to offer advice he believes the young man needs. The young man is cordial but is already on top of the job. He has completed the tasks about which Schmidt is worried. He is confident of his abilities and after just a few minutes he dismisses Schmidt, saying that he has another appointment. He tells Schmidt to come by any time, but you know that he will not be back. When he leaves the office building, Schmidt stands on the sidewalk and looks through a chain-link fence to mounds of trash that have been stacked there and sees box after box of files on which is written the name Schmidt. When he reaches home, his wife asks how his visit went. Even though he is deeply hurt, Schmidt does not tell her and lies instead.
What truth would have helped Schmidt here? It is an old one, taught unashamedly by the early church fathers. It would have diluted his pain, if he had been reconciled to it. That old Christian teaching is this: All things pass away. That is, all things, save God, pass away. Everything that is—everything we are—is passing away. Our world is full of change and is temporal. Only God is eternal, and some theologians think that even God is changing, evolving from age to age.
The key word here is reconciled. To reconcile means “to settle a dispute.” In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “Be reconciled to God”—that is, settle your dispute with God. An important way to settle our dispute with God is to be reconciled to the way life actually is—to stop fighting the way life actually is—to be at peace with the way life is in this God-given world. To be at peace with the way life is means, in part, to be reconciled to the fact that in this world all things pass away. Much of our pain and despair will go away, if we stop fighting that truth.
Schmidt should have known that there would not be a Warren Schmidt Memorial Library that would save, sort, store, and protect all of his papers. He should have expected that the actuary that replaced him would probably not be looking for advice and would have appointments. If he wanted to revisit his old office, he should have called ahead and when he arrived, not try to give advice that wasn’t requested, but to ask, “How are you doing?” or “What’s new?” “All things pass away,” the church fathers said. “Do not invest yourself where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal,” Jesus said. We would have so much less pain and many fewer disappointments if we became reconciled to this observable truth. We must learn to love life and to love in life, just the way it actually is—even though all things pass away. I would have wanted Schmidt to know that, if I were his pastor. Gautama Buddha saw this same truth. Indeed, his first teaching was that suffering comes from hanging on tightly to that which is passing away. Life, as God gives it, is always moving on, and it demands that we move on. I would have encouraged Schmidt to be reconciled to God and to accept the way life is.
Accepting the fact that all things pass away leads us quickly to another truth. Indeed, Schmidt himself eventually saw it, but he did not see it soon enough. Only when he had already lost so much was he able to see and say, “I should have appreciated what I had when I had it.”
This points to one of the most difficult issues in life. Only when Schmidt could not go back did he realize what he should have valued most throughout his life. It is so difficult when starting out to know what you will wish you had valued when you come to the end. The irony in Schmidt’s situation is that while in the end Schmidt feels as though his work life had little meaning, for more than forty years he gave himself almost totally to it. What, in the end, did he wish that he had appreciated while he had it? He wishes that he had valued and appreciated his relationships with his wife and his daughter.
Schmidt felt that he loved his daughter deeply through the years. It’s just that she didn’t feel that he did. When his world was shrinking, Schmidt moved toward his daughter, hoping that she would be there for him, but there was a great distance between them, a distance that she had felt for a long time but of which Schmidt had been unaware. Stated simply, his daughter felt that Schmidt had not been there for her as she grew up and now she had little interest in being there for him. This seems to reflect the fact that there cannot be quality time between a father and his children if there is not a quantity of time. Some things must happen on schedule and in sequence.
It is when his wife is gone that Schmidt realizes how much he loved her. There are a few clues about an important ingredient that was missing in his relationship with Helen. That missing ingredient peeks through when Schmidt comes home after his painful visit to the office. He is hurting, but he cannot or will not express his pain. He has feelings, but he is unable or unwilling to share them. Helen, on the other hand, is unable or unwilling to read the pain behind his eyes. Perhaps she is frightened by his pain and, thus, tries to cover it over with cheeriness and a large RV. This suggests to me that there was not much true intimacy between them through the long years of their marriage. If we are not willing to show ourselves to others, it is unlikely that they will get to know us and we will get to know them. Schmidt did not share his feelings with Helen until after she was dead. “I should have appreciated what I had when I had it,” Schmidt said. In that, he was right on target. If I had been his pastor, I would have wanted him to know that before the end.
As the film comes to a close, Schmidt is hitting bottom because he sees how small his world is. Everything seems lost; everything seems to have come to an end. What he is forgetting is the New Testament story of Nicodemus. He does not realize that even though he is old, it is possible that he could be born again. In fact, the tears he sheds over a photograph may provide him with a toehold for the long climb upward. Louis Begley, who wrote About Schmidt, knew the future better than Schmidt did. The sequel to this novel is entitled Schmidt Delivered. At age sixty-six, Schmidt realizes that his life was not what he now wishes it had been. But he knows more now. He is more human now and feels more deeply now. And, as Jesus would have told him, it was still possible for him to be born again.
Philip Gulley is the author of Unlearning God: How Unbelieveing Helped Me Believe and the popular Harmony series.
Discover my books, stories, and more by visiting Books by Philip Gulley
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So... we should be reconciled to the fact that we are losing our democracy, and just appreciate it while we still have it? Or still have some of it?