Haunted By Phantoms

Tonight I watched one of the most beautiful, heart-filling, and heart-breaking movies that I have watched in awhile. Cinema Paradiso tells the tale of a young man who left his small hometown in Italy to seek his fortune in making films in Rome. His mentor tells him to leave and never return. He doesn't for 30 years. A phone call from his mother brings him back for the funeral of his mentor, Alfredo. At the end of the film, when Toto has recalled all the reasons he left, all the ghosts that continue to haunt him, his mother tells him that she does not blame him for leaving because she knows that he has his own ghosts. And she knows that is all he can see when he is there. The ghosts, the spectres that have haunted him, tormented him for thirty years are still there because he has run away from them.

It's easy to say that the ghosts remain because he is not willing to confront them. And maybe he's not. Perhaps he isn't willing to go through the struggle it takes to make the ghosts go away. Sometimes they can be all too painful to confront. It's easier to just avoid them. Even if that means running to the other end of the country, or beyond.

Even distance doesn't always separate us from those that haunt us. They can come back to us so quickly - a scent, a face in the crowd, a familiar melody. Occasionally there are distances that we can't run, no distance that will ever be great enought for our piece of mind until we turn and look at the phantom. When we can truly see the phantom for what it is, the meaningless meaning that we have forced onto it, that is the moment when we are truly free from the ghost. That is when we can stop running. That's when we are truly free from the phantoms.

Some phantoms are those that we wish to keep. Not the ones that we wish to flee from, but those that we cling to, like a comfy blanket on a cold day. They can be the only thing that keep us warm on the cold nights when we feel so alone.

A TV series I occasionally watch proposed there is a place where spirits remain and can touch those they have left behind, if only for an instant. The smell, the feeling, is all that remains. They cannot touch us and neither can we reach them. But we can feel them and know that they are there. Maybe that's what it feels like to be haunted. To know that someone is there and is watching you. To feel a touch, for the briefest second, and know that you are not alone. Those are the phantoms, the ghosts and the spectres that we keep in our lives.