Maverick vs Walter Mitty: A Journey in Self-Discovery

Daily writing prompt

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

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Considering I’m one of those people who think I have enough trouble being myself, I’ll go ahead and bite.

I’d cheerfully swap places with and become Maverick from Tom Gun. The thought of flying a high-performance fighters under almost impossible conditions appeals to me.

But as they say, nothing is perfect. Maverick is a reckless individual, and in the second movie, is in some ways, a relic. Life has passed him by, and he lives with a lot of regret. We see him trying to fix some of those mistakes.

But that said, I had a flash to the James Thurber story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In it, we have this guy who day dreams of being a world-famous pilot and spy. It ends with him standing in the rain outside a drugstore smoking a cigarette waiting for his wife. But in his imagination, he’s standing in the rain against a wall, smoking a cigarette, and looking at a firing squad.

The question becomes, which was real and which was imagined. Was he the spy staring down the firing squad and waiting to die and wishing for a “Normal Life” where he had a wife and home. Or was he the guy in the “Normal Life” wishing to live a life of adventure.

Whichever was real, it reflects something in us we want, and we have to ask the question of what we really want out of life.

Ah, now there’s the question.

But either way, you still wake up with yourself.