Five Minutes of Heaven

"Five Minutes of Heaven" is a movie I watched last night. It claimed to be inspired by a true event. In 1975, 17-year-old Irish-Protestant Little assassinated 19-year-old Catholic Jim Griffin in his home. The murder was witnessed by Griffin's 11-year-old brother Joe. Thirty years later a TV talk show brought them together for a live on-air reconciliation. The movie told the story of two men haunted by that moment of violence, and how they came face-to-face with their own wolds of pain, violence and vengeance.

It is a thoughtful movie and thought-provoking. It asked the question of what is true reconciliation and is it possible to achieve?  Although it is set in Northern Ireland it is a question applied to every corner of the world where there is conflict, not only the ones we see on TV but what goes on in our own lives. In our close relationships, if we are honest, we all experience and fail to resist that powerful seduction of that "five minutes of heaven", when we relish the power of our anger and righteousness and the sweetness of our revenge. We lash out and punish. We get applause from our friends when we retell and relive the story. "He/She deserves it!" they cheered.

But when we go back to our own lives we realize that five minutes of heaven becomes days of hell and the damage we caused to others and ourselves took much more than five minutes to repair. There is no winner in violence. We are all victims.

My first memory of violence happened when I was 3 or 4 years old. No, it is not sexual or physical abuse. It is something that happens to most of us. It is so common that we tend to ignore its subtle and long-lasting impact. I was trying to reach and tip over a hot water thermos. I screamed when the boiling water spilling onto my chest. I don't remember much of what happen next except my father's fury. He was holding me in his arm and shouting at my mother blaming her for her negligence. I remember how his fury frightened and upset me more than my burn and how I so desperately wanted him to stop lashing out on my mother but the only thing I could do was to cry harder which only made him madder because he felt helpless in easing my pain.

I don't think my father is a violent person although he did have a temper. He was a sensitive soul, more so than my mother. He was more in tune with our emotional lives and because of his sensitivity he suffered deeply when we suffered. He didn't have any formal schooling; joined the Nationalist Army when he was 10. He taught himself how to read and write from reading and copying from the newspapers. He passed away in 1992; the year I came to the United States after spending a year and half with him and my mother in our old house in Xinchu, Taiwan. That was one of the best period of my life, not the happiest but the best. I was very fortunate to be able to return my first home as an adult and spent a year and half with my parents as one. I will never forget those sunny days sitting in the yard listening to my father, telling stories from when he was a young men. Behind his heavy "Long Life" brand cigarette smoke, I saw not just my aging father but a man, a life.