My favorite moment from the film “The Verdict” was when Paul Newman, as a morally bankrupt lawyer who’s finally repossessed his own conscience by taking on Boston’s medical and Roman Catholic establishment in a quixotic malpractice suit, refuses to do what common sense dictates: settle out of court, wait — as his friend advises — for another, less risky, case on which to rebuild his reputation. “There is no other case,” Newman says. “This is the only case.”
The only case. The only moment. This is it! That’s the burden and joy of being fully human: how easy it is once we admit to ourselves how hard it is. The eternity we all sense as possibility within ourselves, by whatever name — God, love, justice — is always on the other side of the door we’re most afraid to open. Yet to open it or not is the only real choice. There is no other door, no other case. The mind plays with the future like silly putty; it’s all clay isn’t it? Yes. And choice is the kiln, offering the only real possibility of being other than eternally half-baked; that’s another kind of fire, advertised as freedom. It’s hell.
