Attraction
Love Letter Day 5.
I started writing something important but it needs time, so I’m cheating today—a day in which I have had not enough time to write—by sharing a passage from a film that was telegraphed to me by a professional colleague who caught it on a flight. “It’s a ridiculous Meryl Streep movie whose premise might not matter, to be honest. This passage bowled me over and I rewinded the movie to write it down and I’m going to share it with you.”
This is the passage, a soliloquy by the sole young male character in the movie who falls in love with an older woman:
You shouldn’t be shy with attraction to someone. Attraction is the animating force in the universe.
Gravity. What pulls the monarch butterflies to fly across the world.
If you feel attracted to someone, from your heart, and you look at them and you feel you can see their soul, there is no bad version of that. To wanna be a part of that. We should treasure it. We’re lucky to have that feeling. It’s the greatest, the fullest expression of what it is to be alive.
Let Them All Talk (written by Deborah Eisenberg and directed by Steven Soderbergh)