“Saving Paradise”: You Can’t Run From Your Past

I always try to watch a random movie on flights. Sure I go back and watch the regulars like Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift, Gatsby & Top Gun Maverick. But every once in a while I will watch some Indian, Korean, Japanese or even obscure American movies.

I decided on “Saving Paradise” which is based on a true story. It centers around the estranged son of the owner of the last remaining pencil manufacturing company who returns to his small town to save his family’s business. He ran away to New York 10 years earlier to pursue a very successful and high flying career as a ruthless corporate raider aka private equity a—hole but is forced to return after his father dies. (Note: I hate most private equity guys as they are just paid a lot of money to slash and burn businesses. Anyways.)

It’s an interesting story about how the skills he learns wrecking companies to make money end up being used by him to turnaround the family business. It takes him a while to get used to things and shows the clash of cultures between cold blooded finance around numbers versus the mid-western blue collar values with a focus on hands on work & operations. Where work is all about dignity. He slowly earns their trust and they are able to turn things around. 

But returning to his old town also forces him to face the tragedies and baggage in his past. Something he has dreaded. Yet confronting it allows him to move on and frees him. It’s a good reminder that you can’t hide from your trauma and pain of the past forever. Unresolved pain festers. You can’t bury it forever. It always reappears in some negative form or other in your life. 

A very big and correct insight from this movie at the macro level was how this was emblematic of how the Private equity and American corporate elites strip-mined & hollowed out our manufacturing base, wrecked the middle class and shopped jobs to China. Ironically, by doing so we empowered our biggest geopolitical rival. This awful legacy is one that America is dealing with right now. 

The big micro insight for me was that as far away as you move and as much as you try to recreate yourself, you can never hide from who you are and where you grew up. And that you can never escape your past so you should try to integrate it into who you are. Good and bad. 

I have a love & hate relationship with Vancouver. It is a beautiful place where I grew up and where my family is. But it’s also where I felt constrained and could not be myself. It’s where I felt I was mocked or looked down on whether that was reality or not. 

That’s why I left as soon as I could. So I could figure out who I really was and to fulfill my ambitions. To recreate myself and spread my wings without the limited expectations of those around me. Thank god for America which showed me what was possible and gave me opportunities I never would have gotten anywhere else. 

But the longer I am away from Vancouver, the more I appreciate it and appreciate what my parents and my upbringing gave me. It made me who I am today and for that I will always be grateful. 

Watching this movie made me realize I need to learn how to better integrate my past with my present and future. This might be one of the reasons I’m still so uncomfortable in my own skin. But knowing and realizing you have a problem is the first step to fixing it.