Recently my wife and I watched a movie called Downhill, starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Louis-Dreyfus in the lead roles. They play a couple who take their two kids on a family ski vacation. Early on in the film we see the family on an outside deck at a restaurant looking at the menu when an avalanche occurs. The avalanche is controlled, meaning explosive and structural defensive mechanisms are used as techniques to intervene in snow-packs which can be hazardous to humans.
Of course, in the case of the film, the Force Majeuere clause kicks in as a metaphor for marriage – to be there for each other for better or worse. The avalanche incident can be interpreted by using the clause – that is, the husband was unable and excused from protecting his family because of unforeseen circumstances.
By this methodology the film really digs deep into the psyche of the viewer and you find yourself trying to legitimise the abandonment. Isn’t that what all humans would do? Or should we have evolved beyond “each to their own” and should the male lead tried to save his entire family? We’re tied in this argument as much as the couple is.
And the psychological reaction became a one-sided response, but still one thing remained: would our survival under the circumstances manifest in momentary lapses or fatal flaws? Or would those things become one and the same? Some couples started to question their relationship, for example, mirroring the couple in the movie. The cracks started to show and emerge as craters separating a togetherness into an apartness and lessons in self-survival were learnt. “Life is too short to be stuck in this relationship,” became a mantra for many. Because we couldn’t flee from our problems, we fought with our psyches and looked forward to surviving after the fight was done. I admire that.
I tried to stick to my regular low-carb diet and workout regimen of 100 burpees per day. I think I managed 300 and then it all fell apart. Force Majeure kicked in and I excused myself from fulfilling my lockdown fitness contract because unforeseeable circumstances prevented me from doing so. Admittedly, initially those unforeseeable circumstances were not the fact that I contracted coronavirus.