You Can't Take it with You

Every time I'm feeling depressed about my job, I watch that classic old movie, "You Can't Take it with You". My job must be really depressing, because we've just about worn out the old VHS tape. (We've had it for years.)

Our new DVD copy finally arrived last week (or thereabouts), so tonight, after hosting a wonderful little get-together for some friends from church, we sat down and watched it again. In glorious big-screen goodness.

For some reason, I couldn't figure out how to display it correctly. The monitor (or TV or whatever you call it) has several different modes to deal with three different resolutions: standard NTSC (old-fashioned TV), mid-range (720p) and high-def (1020p). It also does Standard Screen and Wide-Screen, with a Zoom feature if you really want to look at actor's pimples.

Most DVDs can be watched in Standard mode or WideScreen mode, either Normal or Stretched or Zoomed. This one, no matter what mode I selected, came out the same. Not sure why.

The net result was a lot of artifacts and pixelization. Not really noticeable when viewed on a laptop, but on a big-screen, it was annoyingly obvious.

Oh, and there was that really weird background-shifting thing going on. If you have a big-screen monitor, you've probably noticed it: some element in the background suddenly shifts one or two pixels to the left or right (or up or down) but the rest of the screen is normal. I've been told this is an artifact of the onboard graphics procesor, when it performs edge-detection on elements in frame and tries to sharpen the contrast. Sometimes, the edge shifts subtly between two frames because of lighting conditions, and the graphics processor forces the contrast point to shift, which makes the background element (e.g. a desk or cabinet) appear to move.

It's a really weird effect.

But ... back to the movie.

I've always liked that movie because of attitude it espouses, where we shouldn't worry about things - "Consider the lilies of the field" - or waste our lives doing things we don't like to do (i.e. working at jobs which waste our talents or abilities). At the same time, however, I've always hated that movie, because it doesn't explain how it is that anyone can get through life that way.

For example, Grandpa doesn't need to pay income taxes because he doesn't work. (In fact, there's a scene with a tax collector that is played strictly for laughs because the tax man doesn't understand that Grandpa doesn't work.) That ignores the rather obvious question of how he pays his property tax, which is in quite a different category than the income tax. But it also ignores other rather important costs of living. Wwhere does the money come from for food and utilities? What do they use to pay for repairs to the infrastructure of their home? How do they pay for all the "things" they acquire?

I really want the movie's theme to apply to me, so that I can be like a lily of the field and not worry about where my food and clothes are coming from. But it isn't really the food and clothes I'm worried about. It's the electricity and the water and the gas and the constant little repairs that need to be made around the house; it's the children's education and the planning for the future (i.e. college); it's the ability to take the family somewhere for a day of fun that we'll remember for a lifetime; it's the ability to take trips around the country to see our parents and aunts and uncles, the nieces and nephews before they've all grown up, our friends we've known for so many years but not seen in nearly as long.

The movie ties everything up nicely, leaving the family & friends to celebrate a wonderful dinner together after everyone has come to realize that family is more important than career, that love is more important than money. But it doesn't quite go far enough to explain how that really works for those of us longing for the simple life, where basic needs are met even while we get to do the things we feel called to do, all without incurring incredible debt.

That's expecting way too much out of a fluff movie, I know. Nonetheless, it always leaves me feeling strangely happy and sad at the same time.