WATCH: Lessons from a “blob”

“The quality of a society, I mean of a civilization, is also judged by how it treats elderly people and by the place it gives them in community life”— Benedict XVI, while visiting a home for the elderly on November 12, 2012

Millions of aging and elderly people in this country and around the world go weeks and even months without talking to anyone. They are deeply lonely. When a culture has no room for seniors and their wisdom and gifts, it is impoverished.

This award winning short by Laura Stewart depicts an elderly man going about his daily life accompanied by a “blob.” What exactly the blob represents is unclear — perhaps it’s a projection of himself or a mischievous child who is now grown up. Maybe it’s the memory of his deceased wife, or an another person or being. Whatever the blob represents, it manifests as a looming, gray emptiness in the man’s life, something that is no longer there. The blob’s transformation from gray to color brings home the point that companionship and relationship is what we are meant for — it it like living our lives in color. We are not mean to to be alone.