July 2000

Ally McBeal is the kind of person I want to be. I don't want her life, I wouldn't want her troubles, but I want to be the type of person to do what she did in the episode I saw last month.

Let me back up. Ally McBeal is an American television character. The weekly hour-long show by this name is sometimes a drama, sometimes a comedy. The setting for the show is a 2-partner law firm and the group of lawyers, assistants and protagonists who work there. The stories are always stimulating dilemmas. Like the time Ally dated a manic depressive man who alternated between a life as a successful businessman and a homeless person living on the street.

Ally is one of the lawyers. Passionate and smart, her personal and professional life is played out in front of the beautiful bay windows of her office. Ally is known in her personally life for having hallucinations, noticeably one of Al Green singing by her bedside. And for a number of episodes last year, she was in depression over the inability to fall in love with the right man.

For she is the childhood sweetheart of, and still deeply in love with Billy, one of the other lawyers. Unfortunately, Paul is now married to Georgia, who is also another attorney at the firm. Many of the episode involved the vague and sometimes not-so-vague love of the three: Georgia for Billy, Billy for Ally, Ally for Billy, and Billy for Georgia.

Last season, Billy and Georgia divorced. Contrary to expectations, Billy did not get together with Ally. Unresolved emotional issues with the divorce drove Billy into deep confusion and finally last month, into a battle with a brain tumor. Georgia and Ally, both still in love with Billy, rallied by his side.

But it was Ally who was working on a case with Billy. During final summation, in a dramatic court-room scene, Billy looks at Ally and says. “in the end, love is the only thing that counts . . . and I will love her for all my days. That's all that ever matters. All of my heart, forever.” and then he drops dead on the floor. Literally.

Buckets of tears are used for the rest of the hour. Not to mention the ones shed in my living room. Doing away with one of the main characters always make for great ratings. But we are getting off track. I started this story by saying I wanted to be like Ally, didn't I?

When Georgia came up to Ally and asked, he did go peacefully? Here's what Ally said, “he sat down and I ran up and he said, ‘tell Georgia I love her.’ ” Bingo. I want to be like Ally McBeal. I want to be like Ally McBeal. I want to be like Ally McBeal.

I want to be the type of person who, on receiving the final love declaration of the one person she loved all her life, would turn to the one who took him away and say, he loved you. For the truth that Billy loved her, as important as it was to her, would bring immeasurable pain and sorrow to Georgia. When winning can hurt so much, it is better not to claim the prize.

Most of us face the same moments almost daily in our lives. No, we don't have a Hollywood scriptwriter directing our days, but we do have countless interactions where our being right can hurt someone else's confidence, their pride, or simply their feelings.

Being right seem like such a simple request of life. If I said that this coffee is not hot enough, why would you argue with me? And if you did, how could I not “win” my point? In my simple view, there was only one way to be right. And I couldn’t see why the world didn't agree with me.

What does it matter whether the coffee was hot enough, you say? It would matter, I think, if it were you who made the coffee. Suddenly my being right is not so simple anymore. For most of my life, being right was the guiding principle I used to insist on a point. I couldn’t understand why people around me resisted this quest for truth. If the point’s correctness was the issue, what does it matter that voices were raised or feelings hurt?

When I discovered that people who cared for me was afraid to make me coffee.

Tell me the earth is flat. You will not get an argument from me. I will probably say, I've heard otherwise and let's see if we can find more about it from sources more knowledgeable than us. Over time, you may come to be convinced that perhaps the earth isn't flat. You might even seek me out to share this bit of new knowledge with me. We both would have learned something.

I'm sure you know that this isn't about arguing with your friend about drinking and driving. This is about all those times when winning was dependant on someone losing their spirit.

So if you tell me that the sun revolved around the moon. I won't ague.