You may get your wish – you may not, but accept that you are something exceptional either way.ĭeath isn’t sad – sad is that most people never lived You don’t surrender the dream – what you do surrender is control – accept that you have no control over what happened to you. You share the predicament of humanity – when you don’t get what you want, you suffer and when you get exactly what you want you still suffer, because you can’t hold on to it. There is no starting or stopping, only doing. You can choose to be a victim or anything else you choose to be. He is about absolute vulnerability! That’s the only true courage. It’s not about perfection or invulnerability. Everyone lives in the past or the future.Ī warrior doesn’t give up what he loves… He finds the love in what he does. I know this is a scary moment for you, are you paying attention to it? Sometimes you have to lose your mind before you come to your senses. And it must be said that Salva's more-than-slightly creepy obsession with nubile, half-clad young men, evident in films ranging from CLOWNHOUSE (1989) to JEEPERS CREEPERS (2001), really isn't in sync with Millman's message of metaphysical uplift.Take out the trash- the trash is anything that keeps u from the only thing that matters: this moment! here, now.! You’d be amazed what u can do – and how well you can do it if u were present – every moment of your existence But wrapping a solid truth in cotton-candy cliches doesn't make it accessible - it makes it sound stupid, even when Nolte brings every iota of his considerable down-to-earth gravitas to bear on such pop aphorisms. Socrates' aphorisms are all steeped in undeniable truth: There is "never nothing going on," mental trash does need to cleared out, people do overthink themselves into hopeless emotional paralysis. Told he'll be lucky to walk, let alone compete again, Dan resolves to prove everyone - his doctors, his coach (Tim DeKay), his skeptical teammates - that mind can overturn matter, even if the matter is a fragmented femur held together by metal pins. Dan at first sees the heightened focus he learns at Socrates' knee as another weapon with which to humiliate competitors, but is forced to reassess every aspect of his life after a bone-shattering motorcycle accident.
The gas-station guru, whom Dan dubs "Socrates," is an enlightened master of Asian mind-body disciplines and takes it upon himself to awaken the unreflective Dan to the way of the peaceful warrior, who engages life fully and reflectively every minute of every day. That run takes Dan to a gas-station convenience store, where an enigmatic encounter with the philosophizing owner (Nick Nolte) sets him on a path of spiritual awakening filled with arduous tests, painful setbacks and a radical reordering of priorities that will test him sorely. It's only a dream, but it unnerves Dan enough to get him out of bed - which he's sharing, true to his nature, with his best friend's girl - and send him on a 3AM run. It opens as cocky, womanizing, ferociously competitive UCLA gymnastic jock Dan (Scott Mechlowicz) dismounts after an arduous routine, only to have one leg shatter into a million tiny pieces.
The result is something close to a textbook example of how not to visualize spiritual principles of the "be here now" variety.
Horror specialist Victor Salva's too-reverent adaptation of Dan Millman's 1980 self-help memoir The Way of the Peaceful Warrior gives equal time to New Agey psychoprattle and the voyeuristic spectacle of college gymnasts putting their tight-as-a-drum physiques through sweaty, intricate exhibitions of precision physical prowess.