The Grand Gesture

I think I watch too many movies. In fact, I’m sure of it.

There’s a great episode of Friends in which Chandler and Joey discover a free porn channel on their TV. They don’t dare turn off the TV or change the channels for fear that the free porn will disappear from their channel selection.

Eventually, they realize they’ve watched too much porn when they begin to be frustrated by the lack of porn “reality” in their own lives. After all, they surmise, why wouldn’t the lady at the deli counter offer a little something “on the side” of the chicken breasts they’d ordered? Apparently that scenario only exists in porno-land.

I’ve watched several movies lately that have made me question the nature of my own reality, my romantic (not porn) reality, that is.

In The Other Boleyn Girl, the screenwriters would have us believe that King Henry began a new church just to have sex with Anne Boleyn. Now that’s what I call a grand gesture. Though I’m fairly sure a lot more thought went into the creation of the Church of England than how quickly Hank could play hide the salami with Anne, I’m pretty enamored with the idea of the grand gesture.

In all my favorite movies, the heroines are recipients grand gestures: in Love Actually, the Prime Minister goes door to door searching for his beloved in Wandsworth (the dodgy end) while singing “Good King Wenceslas” for the neighborhood children; in The Apartment, Bud Baxter quits his dream job so that he won’t have to give his apartment key to the slimy boss who’s messing around with Bud’s love, Fran. And, most amazingly in City of Angels, Seth gives up his life as an angel to be with Maggie.

So where’s my grand gesture? Where’s my Seth, Bud, and singing Prime Minister? As Charlotte in Sex in the City exclaims: “I’ve been dating since I was 15. I’m exhausted. Where is he?”

I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” Gandhi said this, and I really believe it. If I want more love in the world, then I have to be more loving; if I want more peace in the world, then I have to be more peaceful, etc.

So if I want a grand gesture, should I perform a grand gesture myself?

What would that even look like? I don’t sing particularly well, I’m definitely no angel, and any gesture that would require giving up my dream job would also require a lobotomy on my part.

I guess what it really comes down to is taking risks. And maybe most of us who live in the real world without scripted endings aren’t so good at taking risks, especially when our hearts are involved.

But a girl can still dream.