One Week

What would you do if you discovered that you only had a limited time left on this planet, that you only had a day … a week … a month left to live. What would be the first choices, your first gut, heart-wrenching reactions? Would you flee in search of adventure, truth and answers? Would you hibernate? Would you share your news with the world, or would you sit with the information, trying to decipher what it all meant, truly? What wish would you fulfill? Would you express your love to anybody in particular? What book would you write? I can’t imagine anything more ground-shakingly real than a death sentence imposed in bright bold headlines screaming that your reality is suddenly and wholeheartedly finite and defined.

Such is the premise behind the movie ‘One Week’. A treasure I found in the bowels of the teeny St Clair library here in Toronto. As is my normal routine in settling within a city for any length of time, I find the closest local library and become a member. This is of vital importance to me. That connection with community and knowledge, the ability to establish a routine of sorts where I actually feel a sense of stability and solace, where I can expand my education in whatever realm I pursue to explore. A home to endless pleasure and ever-expanding schooling. Libraries do this for me. Be that in the form of illuminating movies, fascinating reads, stunning moments of connection with the pages of a book or quiet solitude. From my experience, Toronto has one of the best library systems in the country that I’ve discovered. A sheer wealth of resources available, be it at the tiniest of libraries or in the heart of the giant 4 story building dead-centre downtown Toronto. I often stumble across fabulous movies I’d never ever consider renting or watching, and with free access to hundreds of thousands of titles, I grasp whatever theme I fancy to explore and examine.

As with any journey, whether it be on the road to discovery (in an Airstream trailer!), through the pages of a book, the chronicling of a documentary, or in the questions stimulated by a really good movie, I realize that any pursuit of knowledge and the very personal answers that journey reveals can be a life-changing event that forever shifts perspective, ideals, goals and dreams.

The beauty of journaling, about what comes up in the midst of this excursion, lies in the revealing answers about what I might consider doing when life is presented on a platter, in vivid black and white, and I must choose between the comfortable confines of my current existence or the uncanny rhythms of a road less travelled.

I highly recommend this movie ‘One Week’ not just because it is a gorgeous sampling of Canadiana unveiled (part road trip movie, part love letter to Canada) but because it might just present a journey into the unknown, asking questions you dare not even consider in the solace of your daily life.

“One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
~ Ulysses