Watching Jay Kelly over the weekend, the new George Clooney movie that is available with a Netflix subscription, affected me in a pretty profound way that I didn’t anticipate. You see, I’m about a couple of months away from a milestone birthday that, at least when I was younger, I saw as the birthday when a person turns “old.” I don’t feel old, and despite a health complication or two, I don’t feel all that different from the way I did 10 years ago.
Mentally, though, my own mortality has become much more present than it ever has been. I think more about things I’ve done in life, or things I didn’t do, and how things would be different today had different paths been chosen. That’s not to say I’m looking back with regret; it’s not that at all. It’s the “what ifs” that get me thinking, just like the character Jay Kelly (Clooney).
Jay Kelly Reflecting On His Life Got Me Doing The Same Thing
I won’t give away too much here. I don’t want to spoil the 2025 movie if you haven’t seen it, but the structure of the film follows an aging movie star reflecting on his life and the times where the path forked. We all have those moments. The “what if I’d taken a different job when I was 23?” or “What if I’d moved to Spain at 25?” and the biggest one, “did I follow my dreams and what does that mean?”
In the movie, Kelly looks back on moments when he either seized an opportunity or shunned one and what those decisions affected decades later. Obviously, I’m nothing like Kelly (or George Clooney, who is kind of just playing himself in a way), but it’s only natural to compare those moments in our lives. Throughout much of the movie, it seems he regrets a lot of decisions, and as I said, I don’t spend much time regretting things.
Trying To Fix All Of Life’s Past Mistakes Is Impossible
Are there moments I wished I’d done things differently? Of course, but just like in the movie, everything happens for a reason, and wishing things could have gone differently is just a way to beat yourself up over things you no longer have control of. I don’t have a Delorean that can take me back to moments and change the future, so dwelling on things like that serves little purpose. This is something Kelly learns, which I am working on, too.
However, it's not like you can just turn off that part of your brain that lets these twinges of regret sneak in. At least, I can’t. I’m not as old as Kelly is in the movie, but those thoughts are still creeping in more and more. Trying to find a way to balance the good with the bad, as Kelly finally does, is really the only way forward, not with regret, but with acceptance for what is.
