A friend and I were discussing a movie I watched recently called Jeremiah Johnson, which came out around 1972 and starred Robert Redford. The movie made a big impact on me (apart from the fact that Redford was in it….I would be content just to watch him read the phone book.) I lamented about how incredibly difficult life must have been for this “mountain man”, when the sum total of each day was spent trying to find food in the inhospitable frozen mountains. Every single moment was dedicated to staying alive, and at the end of each day, you knew that the next one would be exactly the same. But my friend had a different take. “How easy it must have been!” he pointed out. No working by committee, no meetings, no hidden agendas, no juggling money, no responsibilities other than finding food and surviving. How freeing must that have been?! Your only responsibility was to yourself, and you relied on no one but yourself. Life was black and white, with absolutely no shades of grey. You either made it or you didn’t. Makes me wonder……
