Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 87 - The Razor’s Edge
Welcome to Issue 87 of Deep Life Reflections, where I share five things I’ve been enjoying and thinking about over the past week.
This week we explore the powerful influence of the past on the present through two notable works. The first is award-winning journalist Annie Jacobsen’s new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, a visceral reminder that the threat of nuclear disaster remains all too real. The second is PT Anderson’s Oscar-nominated 1999 film Magnolia, where a sprawling patchwork of characters try to overcome unresolved trauma amid trying circumstances. We also contemplate the role of resilience and its fluidity, recognising we have more control than we think and how we can reshape our lives by drawing from the past.
Join me as we explore this week’s Friday Five.
1. What I’m Reading
Nuclear War: A Scenario. By Annie Jacobsen.
“Après moi, le deluge”—“After me, the flood”—Napoleon Bonaparte.
I read this book in only a couple of sittings. Like a thriller you can’t put down. Except unlike a thriller, this is real. Not real in a literal sense, but real in its factual basis and sobering plausibility. Nuclear War: A Scenario is as awful as it is compelling. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Annie Jacobsen has detailed—practically second by second—what a nuclear strike on the United States would look like—and the ensuing response. Spoiler: it doesn’t end well. The world is pretty much over in just 72 minutes; less time than a football match. As Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev cautioned in a joint statement in 1985: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
If this sounds ground-zero bleak, it is. But it’s also an essential book. Nuclear War: A Scenario is Jakobson’s warning to leaders, governments, and institutions around the world that the threat of nuclear war didn’t disappear when the Cold War ended. It remains the biggest threat to humanity. We only need to look around us today to see that global tensions are at their highest in decades. The timing couldn’t be more appropriate.
Jacobsen has imagined a scenario of what an inbound nuclear missile launch on the U.S. could look like. She’s based it on facts sourced from interviews with presidential advisors, cabinet members, nuclear weapons engineers, scientists, soldiers, intelligence analysts, and many others involved in these clandestine scenarios over the decades.
The first part of the book gives us the background. This part is real. It’s December, 1960. We’re in an underground bunker in Nebraska where U.S. War Planners are working on a secret plan to kill 600 million people in a pre-emptive strike on Moscow, with nearly half of those deaths affecting neighbouring countries like China—nations not even involved. Only one man spoke up: General David M. Shoup, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, “Any plan that murders three hundred million Chinese when it is not even their war is not a good plan. That is not the American way.” Nobody seconded his dissent. They all looked away. This chilling account is from John Rubel’s memoir who, near the end of his life, decided to tell the world what he could not back in 1960. At the time, the U.S. had over 18,000 nuclear bombs.
We then move to the scenario itself, the main part of the book. Nuclear War begins at 4:03am in North Korea when it launches an ICBM toward Washington, D.C. We don’t know the reasons why. We only witness what happens next—the playbooks the U.S. must follow, the split-second decisions, the sheer incredulity, the ramifications for the world. All this is based on Jacobsen’s research, interviews, and declassified information. This is the part of the book you won’t put down.
This is just a scenario of course. But it’s also a powerful piece of investigative work that helps us understand the world we really live in—and how all leaders and governments have an ethical responsibility to make sure nuclear war only ever exists in hypothetical scenarios like these.
2. What I’m Watching
Magnolia (1999). Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
“We may be through with the past, but the past isn’t through with us.”
1999 was a vintage year for films. Fight Club, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense. They all tapped into that existential uncertainty of a new millennium. But my favourite film that year was the lesser-known Magnolia, the third feature from 29-year-old director Paul Thomas (PT) Anderson. I hadn’t seen a film like it before. Repeated viewings in the years since have only deepened my appreciation. It’s a film about people and the vast legion of emotions they experience. Misery, denial, repression, compassion, and forgiveness.
Magnolia is a sprawling story set over one eventful day in the San Fernando Valley. It follows a multitude of seemingly unconnected characters as they go about their lives. Perhaps they are only connected by how unhappy they are. We’re introduced to a good-hearted cop looking for love, a man on his deathbed seeking redemption, a child prodigy with overbearing parents, a tormented wife, a sleazy self-help guru, and many others.
The film’s brilliant opening scene sets the overarching theme of the film, “We may be through with the past, but the past isn’t through with us.” It asks us to consider the role of coincidence, fate, and the lasting weight of unresolved trauma, especially from childhood. This theme is seen most obviously in Stanley, the young quiz show prodigy expected to give the right answer every time, and Donny (the excellent William H. Macy), a former child star who is now a sad, emotional wreck. Aimee Mann’s insular soundtrack, both downbeat and uplifting, only adds to the characters’ inner turmoil and enduring hurt.
This is also one of Tom Cruise’s best roles. Maybe his finest. Cruise plays the high-energy, swaggering self-help guru Frank Mackie, who tells his male followers to “seduce and conquer.” He’s all sweat and bravado when he sits down to speak with a female interviewer after the show but is reduced to a silent, empty shell of a human being after she cuts through the thin veneer of his bravado and probes his damaged past. Anderson had Cruise specifically in mind for this role, but was adamant about keeping it as an ensemble film and not a Tom Cruise vehicle. Cruise was rewarded with an Oscar-nomination.
All this builds towards one of the most surprising, baffling, and even jarring endings ever made. I won’t spoil it, except to say there is a strong biblical reference—I read that Magnolia alludes to Exodus 8:2 over a hundred times. What we end up with is all characters experiencing some sort of emotional meltdown followed by a cathartic release. They are all written so well by Anderson it’s hard not to feel empathy as they each search for redemption and dignity.
The title of the film is interesting. The magnolia flower dates back over 100 million years and is a symbol of resilience and perseverance. Like the flower, these characters survive, adapt, and endure—though not without struggle, without pain. Anderson seems to recognise that to find some kind of peace, each of his characters needs to relinquish a piece of their unresolved past.
To bloom again.
3. What I’m Contemplating
Both featured works this week explore the lurking presence of the past—whether it’s the historical trauma of the nuclear arms race or the unresolved personal pain explored in Magnolia—and how these experiences shape our present. The line, “We may be through with the past, but the past isn’t through with us”, captures this well. It resonates with anxieties—whether on a geopolitical scale or in more immediate, personal challenges we face every day.
Sometimes, it can feel like we have no control over these challenges. But we do—at least over those in our immediate world. As a coach, one of the key perspectives I help people develop is the idea of agency: the recognition that we often have more influence over our lives than we realise. This means shining a light on blind spots to question beliefs and current thinking. And we all have blind spots.
Next week, I’ll be giving a talk called ‘Resilience By Design,’ sharing three practical strategies to build everyday resilience, framed within my own major health challenge almost one year ago. Resilience isn’t binary; it’s fluid, like a reservoir that rises and falls based on circumstances, choices, actions, and support from others. It’s also like a muscle—it needs consistent use to stay strong, not only in times of crisis but as part of our daily lives. I’ll share more about this talk on my website—so look out for that.
Often, we can draw wisdom from past challenges to help us face and work around present tensions. In this way, the past becomes a resource that supports us, rather than a weight that draws from us.
4. A Quote to note
“The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard.”
- The Razor’s Edge by William Somerset Maugham.
5. A Question for you
What is one lesson from your past that has helped you become stronger in the present?
Thanks for reading and being part of the Deep Life Journey community. If you have any reflections on this issue, please leave a comment. Have a great weekend.
James
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