Lawrence of Arabia

For the lover of art, picking a favorite piece of music, painting, poem, novel, or film is as difficult as a parent choosing his favorite child.

If asked, however, to name the film that has moved me more deeply than any other, and has influenced me in more ways that I can number, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), starring Peter O'Toole, would have to top my list.  Seeing the restored version on the big screen in 1989 changed my life.

T.E. Lawrence was hardly a saint, Stoic or otherwise. He was a man of struggle, of contradictions, of good in bad and of bad in good. His sense of moral duty was often intertwined with delusional vanity. But this is precisely why he inspires me. Few of us will raise a rebellion in the desert and try to make sense of it all; all of us will face our own rebellions and deserts within ourselves and have to make sense of it for ourselves.

The film is also, of course, a blend of fact and fiction, as is most every legend. These three lines from the film, however, stay with me always as models of self-control and dedication to purpose, however impossible the world may tell us they are. The success isn't in the prize that will be later be awarded by fortune. The striving for virtue is itself the prize. It's only a matter of going.

Written on 7/01/2013