A Little Help From Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirate

It’s not unusual for lines from movies to come up in conversation among my friends. Really, we pull from film, television, books and music–we’re not picky about our mediums. Most of the time things come up in jest (though I think that one guy was serious when he tried to pick me up with a line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Then there are the occasions when I put my knowledge of pop culture to real, helpful, use.

I’m a self-confessed movie fiend and sometimes I fall back on that when in a tight spot. Recently, I had to write a rather difficult email to someone and I found myself resorting to quoting Captain Jack Sparrow. This of course prompted a full-on Pirates of the Caribbean marathon and further thoughts on the lessons I’ve taken from the trilogy. Granted, it’s a pretty action-driven franchise, but there are a few gems that have stuck with me nonetheless. I’ll start with the quotation that I used in that difficult email I referenced.

Captain Jack Sparrow: “The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do.”

A fairly simple commandment, but how often do we boil things down to their essential natures and conflicts? In general, I am a black and white thinker. I try to be objective and straightforward. These are traits that come in handy when I find myself in a sticky spot. They can help me to lead myself or someone else out of a maelstrom of emotional crap and into a place where forward motion is possible again. I don’t know if it helped the recipient of that email, but it helped me to write it. In that situation, I could pose the questions that needed answers, but I could not resolve them.

That was a line from the first film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Now, I’ll pick something from the second film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

Captain Jack Sparrow: “Complications arose, ensued, were overcome.”

A clever quip that has enough spark to give me pause. I think this sums up rather nicely what most complications amount to. They take up some time and make things more difficult, but your general complication is eventually overcome. Obviously, there are extreme cases that I am not trying to demean here, but think about the things that were in your way in the past and how they were overcome. Whatever is in front of you now, will share the same fate. People are resilient creatures and there is very little we can’t triumph over when we put our mind to it. Everyday life inevitably comes with complications, don’t sweat it, ride the wave.

Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow

Three movies, three quotations. Here’s a snippet of a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

Elizabeth: I didn’t have a choice.
Will: You chose not to tell me.
Elizabeth: I couldn’t tell you. It wasn’t your burden to bear.
Will: But I did bear it, didn’t I? I just didn’t know what it was.

I love this exchange. This ranks as one of my favorite scenes ever. I think it speaks for itself well enough without the context. It has such an important lesson to teach. We’ve all lied about something in our lives. I imagine most people lie to protect people that they care about. Sometimes we lie to protect ourselves, but that’s the same thing. The reality is that if you have people close to you that you hide things from, they feel it. It feels like a glass wall. You can’t see it or touch it or explain easily why you know that there’s something there blocking your connection to another person, but you know it’s there. And the longer those lies stay in place, the thicker the wall becomes. As soon as you tell a lie to another person, you burden them with an illusion they can’t fight, but must live under. I wonder why it’s so easy to delude ourselves into thinking  people need protection from the truth.

Orlando Bloom as Will Turner

I don’t mean to get preachy and this isn’t directed at anyone in particular, unless it be myself. But I love movies for this reason: that they can offer these insights in underhanded and unforeseen ways. Pirates is not necessarily the place I would go looking for answers to life’s questions. That first example I adopted as a life motto as soon as I heard it, but I have a tendency to forget about the other two until I watch the films again. Here is my record that I watched, I listened, and I took heed. Wisdom comes from unlikely places sometimes. I will take it where I can get it.