Peggy wanted a child. Or so she thought. It was part of her pre-packaged life, cookie-cut out of the raw dough that led her to being confronted genuinely with the fact that reality does not care very much about one’s plans. It is curious to contemplate how many individuals in this world are self-motivated to move themselves out of a position of comfort toward a position of searching, versus the world inducing such a transformation. It is not to say that everyone adapts to what life throws their way properly, as in, dissecting the soul of a person and impinging the act of self-examining or of soul-searching. But it is accurate to think that most step outside of the box when forced to, as with Peggy.

The interesting thing that Something, Anything shows is not the immediate adoption of a serious religious or spiritual pursuit. It is more an act or process of healing that she has to experience after the tragedy of her miscarriage. The world moves passed her, indifferent really, to her pain. No one can quite understand and no one around her quite cares. She separates with her husband but there really isn’t any effort on his part to alleviate her symptoms – assuming he had the tools to do such a thing. His mediocre position in life where a job promotion is a significant life alteration suggests he doesn’t.

The only person who seemingly can is a monk who is a brother a friend from bygone high school. He, seemingly, is the only one who tried to offer more than an apology. He offered her a prayer for peace. His depth and sagacious attitude toward living abruptly touched her so much she moved away from her convention toward an effort to dispossess herself from attachments akin to a monastic life. She downgraded her steady realtor job to filing books at a library, she downgraded her car, she even removed her mobile phone from her life. As outsiders looking in, we may not understand this as therapeutic for her spirit, sort of an act at hitting a reset button. And it is unfortunate that society does not care to embrace such elongated forms of healing as a natural therapy – a quick medicated fix is most often advocated, as if she has a quote problem that can be so easily remedied with drugs.

Peggy’s culture is one that, even in the South, is not visibly religious. It does not prepare an individual toward adapting to when the going gets tough, when the only one who can help is the one staring in the mirror. The nonchalance of her closest friends makes this demonstration of the common profanity of the contemporary overt. In addition to the mere fact that mediocrity does not expose itself to challenges which would require deep acupunctured relief when the pain swells after being displaced with failure. Hence Peggy’s adulation of Tim, the monk which reached out to her; he is her salvation in her moment of duress; and hence too her mandate on being patient with the development of their relationship, lest she be ruled by passions and not of spirit. She does not know where her life will take her, but at least now she is self-aware enough to care.

Grade: B+

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