Last Person on Earth

Have you ever seen a movie that really stuck with you? For months, sometimes for years, it would come back into your mind? Not because it was scary or creepy, necessarily. Just because some scene in the movie was so extraordinary that you never forgot it.

Last summer, I went and saw “I Am Legend”. That movie, with Will Smith, hasn’t haunted me, exactly, but it is brought back into my memory at odd moments, like when a smell brings back a memory from childhood.

In the movie, people begin dying of some unknown disease. Will is a man living in New York with his wife and daughter. He sends his family out of the city before there is a lockdown, and no one else is allowed to leave. He stays to try to find a cure for whatever it is that is killing everyone. The problem is, he runs out of live people with whom to interact. He has only his dog for company, and we watch as he begins to slowly slip into madness brought on by isolation.

One scene that really affected me was when the main character goes to the busiest part of New York City—and no one is there. In an interview that I saw after watching the movie, Will said that he was strangely affected by this same scene. One of the places in the world where you can always be sure to find people—a lot of people—and not a soul in sight.

A couple of months after seeing the movie, I was riding my bike home from the store. It was Halloween night. The children were done trick-or-treating, but porch lights were still on. It was the strangest thing: no one—and I mean no one—was out. I rode past a park where there is always at least one person usually shooting baskets or hitting a ball against a wall in the tennis court.

Nothing.

I felt like the last person on Earth.

The strange thing was that it was terrible and wonderful at the same time. I thought about how good life could be if only I could get away from the rat race now and then and have absolute quiet like this. On the other hand, I mused, how good a life could it be if I were the last person on Earth? So I rode on through the streets, enjoying my taste of twilight, the time of day that isn’t day and isn’t night. It’s a state of nothingness. I just let my imagination have full rein, I guess. Looking back, I realize that I got my “away” time during that ride home. Since a healthy imagination is an important part of a good life, I figure it turned out to be a good thing.

Still, if I’m out walking, or riding my bike and the street is completely empty, that scene from that movie comes to mind, giving me the opportunity to be there in body, while my imagination soars.

That was one movie that has helped me have a good life.