This was a rich uplifting movie of a true story.  The main character, Jean-Dominique Bauby,  was the editor in chief of Elle Magazine in France. He was a man about a town. He had had a mistress with whom he had two or three children but didn’t choose to marry or to live with.

He and another woman were passionately in love when, at the age of forty-three, Jean-Dominique had a massive stroke. He was in a coma for twenty days. When he woke up, he found he was totally paralyzed except for one eye which he could blink and could communicate yes or no with blinking once or twice. That was it. He did not look like the person he was before the stroke. He was not able to smile as shown in the photo above.

He still had his mind and his heart and the sight in one eye. Through incredible determination and patience and the determination and patience of others who went through the alphabet for each letter of each word, he wrote a book about his experience. And the movie is adapted from his book.

Recently, I heard an explanation for misfortune that I had never heard before, or I may have heard but not tied together. Here is the gist:

First of all, none of us would be alive if it were not for God’s energy. This I believe without question.

There were three possible reasons given for why God would, for instance, totally paralyze a man. Of course, I cannot believe the premise that God causes anyone to be totally paralyzed. Is God responsible for everything? But, of course, I have no explanation of my own.

But in this discussion I heard,  reasons given for total paralysis or devastating illness were:

It was for the person’s evolution, therefore, a reward.

It was a punishment.

It was a warning.

I can understand reward. I don’t like the idea of punishment, but at least I know what it means. But warning? What could that French editor have done with a warning?  To what use could he put a warning? He was totally paralyzed.

And who can say that he deserved it. I do not understand how anyone could deserve going through what he went through. He was innocently learning his way through life the way all of us do.

According to the movie, after his stroke, the mother of his children continued to love him. She brought the children. She took him to the beach in his wheelchair. She knew how to love no matter what.

Jean-Dominique wrote something like this in his book: “How I hurt this woman. And now I have no way to make it up to her.”

Obviously, he was more aware now than he had been when he was in the best of health. He had grown. Perhaps it could be said that he had been warned and he had grown from the warning.

According to the movie, the woman he was passionately in love with never came to see him. Before we criticize her too badly, she tried to come and would turn back. She couldn’t face her lover as paralyzed, drooling, and with one blinking eye. She just couldn’t. She didn’t have the character and strength that the mother of his children had. The mother of his children was amazing. It was no effort for her. She loved, and the loss of the man’s good looks and mobility did not affect her love.

If his paralysis had been a warning, maybe the warning was for his mistress who couldn’t bear to see him and this was to help her find deeper values.

Punishment for Jean-Dominique, however? Punishment for what? Having girlfriends? It seems like a too severe punishment for being an attractive man who loved women and that women were happy to give themselves to. I can’t believe in God as a punishing God under any circumstances.

Evolution? Reward? I suppose I can understand. In the big picture.

And then I read a little more about the movie and discovered that great liberties had been taken with the script. Jean-Dominique’s latest love did come to see him often. She was even perhaps more loyal than the mother of his children had been. In one article I read, the mother of his children was off with her new boyfriend and not so devoted to the father of her children  as the movie portrayed.

And yet that article left the impression that she was unworthy for having a new boyfriend, as if she had been terribly disloyal. Why was she looked down on for getting on with her life? Why are these judgments made? Jean-Dominique had left her long before.

So, anyway, this was on my mind this morning.