The other night, I ventured out of the castle and went to see the 40th anniversary showing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on the big screen.
There’s something oddly comforting about those events. Seeing a movie like that in a theater again feels different—bigger, warmer, almost communal. I’ve seen plenty of older films that originally lived on my television suddenly come alive in a theater, and every time it feels like discovering them all over again.
What always amuses me is how some movies become so ingrained that you don’t just watch them—you recite them. You sit there half a beat ahead of the dialogue, quietly mouthing the lines like a ritual you didn’t realize you’d memorized.
The funniest moment came at the very end. As the credits started to roll, a handful of people got up and began filing out—like people always do. Meanwhile, those of us who knew better stayed planted.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know why. Matthew Broderick pops back in at the very end with that final line: “You’re still here? It’s over. Go home.”
I remember looking at the couple next to me, and almost in unison we said, “You can tell they’ve never seen this before.”
Or maybe they had—but forgot. And maybe that’s the point.
Because movies like that aren’t just entertainment. They’re nostalgia. They’re markers in time. They’re pieces of who we were when we first saw them.
Nostalgia Without the Sting
I’ve written before about how looking into the past can bring regret. How memory has a way of filtering everything through whatever ending came last—and sometimes that ending was ugly.
But not everything in the past deserves that kind of lens.
Some things—like an old movie—bring back memories without dragging regret along with them. They remind you of a time, a feeling, a version of yourself that simply existed without needing to be corrected or rewritten.
There were plenty of bad things going on in the world when Ferris Bueller was released. But that’s not what comes to mind when I think about it. What comes to mind is something lighter. Something better.
And maybe that’s the difference.
The Past Isn’t All One Thing
It’s easy—too easy—to let a bad ending rewrite an entire story.
But just because something ended under a black cloud doesn’t mean the whole thing was darkness.
That applies to more than movies.
It applies to my marriage.
There were things I wish had been different. Things that were broken. Things that, in hindsight, were probably beyond repair.
But that doesn’t erase the good.
There were real experiences. Real adventures. Real moments that mattered.
And pretending those didn’t exist just because of how it ended doesn’t make anything more honest—it just makes it more one-dimensional.
“Make It Work”
One thing that keeps coming back to me is the idea of “traditional marriage.”
And no, I’m not talking about the cultural arguments people love to throw around.
I’m talking about the quiet expectation—the one that says: you stay, no matter what.
“Until death do us part.”
For generations, that wasn’t just a phrase. It was a rule.
I’ve known people who stayed in deeply unhealthy—sometimes abusive—situations because they believed leaving wasn’t an option. Whether that belief came from religion, family, or just cultural inertia, it carried weight.
Even without those formal beliefs, that voice still lingers.
You have to make it work.
I was told that. More than once.
But anyone who really knew my situation would’ve told you something else entirely: it was broken. Not strained. Not difficult. Broken.
And sometimes, that’s the truth we avoid the hardest.
The Fear of Failure
I think a lot of it comes down to one thing: we don’t want to fail.
We want to succeed—even in situations that are actively harming us. Even when “success” just means prolonging something that should’ve ended.
So we stay.
We push.
We try to fix things that aren’t fixable.
Because admitting something didn’t work feels worse than continuing something that clearly doesn’t.
Add tradition to that, and you get a powerful combination: you’re supposed to stay, and if you don’t, you failed.
That’s a hard narrative to fight.
A Hard Thought
This is the part that doesn’t sit comfortably, but it’s been sitting with me anyway.
I sometimes wonder, in those last days or weeks, if he was told the same thing.
Make it work.
And if that was the only framework he could see, I wonder if what he did felt—at least to him—like a solution.
As my psychiatrist has told me more than once: we’ll never truly know.
And over time, I’ve come to accept that not knowing might not be the worst outcome.
Because the reality is, there is a decision in that moment. It isn’t something that happens in a vacuum. It isn’t as simple as waking up one day and choosing it on a whim.
There’s a process. A narrowing of options. A belief—however distorted—that this is the way to resolve something that feels unresolvable.
That doesn’t make it right.
But it does make it human.
And maybe that’s part of why suicide prevention is so complicated. Because to the person in that moment, it can feel like a way to “make it work.”
A final solution to an unbearable problem.
Maybe We Need Better Options
The problem is, we often reinforce that same narrow thinking.
We tell people to stay.
To push through.
To make it work.
Even when it’s clear that “working” isn’t really working at all.
Maybe what we need to do instead is expand the conversation.
Give people more than one acceptable outcome.
Let “walking away” be just as valid as “holding on.”
Because sometimes, the healthiest choice isn’t endurance.
It’s exit.
Learning From Simpler Wisdom
At the end of the day, I keep coming back to something simple.
My dog and my mom both have a way of approaching problems that’s… refreshingly uncomplicated.
If something isn’t working, you look for something better.
Not harder. Not longer.
Better.
Maybe that’s something the rest of us could stand to relearn.