How to live a good life

“Tell me I have led a good life…Tell me I am a good man”

A camera pans to an old man walking in a cemetery on a warm sunny summer day. The location is France. It’s a cemetery for American soldiers who died during the D-day landings.

An old man walks through rows and rows of almost endless symmetrical lines of gravestones. He is followed by his family, and as he approaches a gravestone he collapses to his knees, and starts to weep.

After talking to the gravestone for a while, he stands up. His wife approaches him, and he turns to her looking clearly emotional. As his voice cracks, he asks: “Tell me I have led a good life… Tell me I am a good man.”.

This is a scene from the multi-Oscar winning blockbuster Saving Private Ryan. I re-watched the film recently and realised that the film is not really about war. It’s about existentialism, and how to live a good life. This is probably what explains its popularity.

I think the movie is so popular because the themes of the movie resonate with us at such a deep level that we can’t help but be engrossed.

The old man in the graveyard is Private Ryan, just 50 or so years later after WWII. He wanted to know if he made the most of his life, especially given that others laid down their lives so that he could survive.

This is an example of an “existential” question, similar to the type of thoughts and questions I often ask myself. Have you ever thought: