About Schmidt

Like About A Boy, About Schmidt touches on the theme of making some sort of difference -- having a life with meaning. A life unshared is not a meaningful life. When Warren Schmidt retires, he returns to his old office to say hello and finds himself surprisingly irrelevant, his years of work neatly boxed and left out by the trash. When his wife dies suddenly, he's left adrift, with no plans, no direction, and an aching emptiness where the purpose of his life should be.

Only when he fosters a poor African child does he find, comically, a way to vent, to explore his emotions -- those he has bottled up all these years. He complains about his wife, his replacement at the office, and ruminates on his own mortality. There's no way a 6-year-old Tanzanian child can possibly absorb any of this.

Those commercials tug at our heartstrings. Sally Struthers tells us that for so many cents per day, we can make a real difference in a child's life. Won't we please donate now? If that's the only difference we can make, is that enough?

Warren tries to make a difference in the lives of others, but people make their own decisions and life is not within our control. We cannot predict, with great accuracy, the decisions people will make.

We can only hope that our own decisions make some sort of difference and leave some sort of legacy. For Warren Schmidt, and for the rest of us, there's still time left.