Keep Moving Forward

Lets see, take responsibility for my own actions, or blame you?

Meet the Robinsons is by far one of my all time favorite movies. Its about this kid, Wilbur, who loves to invent things but is always falling just short of success with them. He lives in an orphanage and worries he will never be adopted because of his wacky personality and inventions. One day, he decides to invent something to help him remember his mother so he can find her and bypass the whole adoption scene. Sadly, a mysterious "bowler hat man" rigs our heroes invention unbeknownst to him and causes a very large accident at his school's gym during the big science fair. Needless to say Wilbur is dejected and downcast; ready to give up on his dream of being an inventor. In a semi-complicated series of events Wilbur ends up in the future, and gets a glimpse of the wonderful changes the world will see in his lifetime. Here he is asked to repair a time traveling machine in order to stop our mysterious bowler hat man from ruining the world. Wilbur, still smarting from the science fair, doesn't believe he can fix the machine. Over and over his friend tells him to just "keep moving forward". Annoyed at this constant barrage of motivational therapy Wilbur snaps at him, asking him why he keeps saying that. His friend tells him its his Dad's motto, and that, by the way, his Dad is the one that invented all the great things that made this future world so great. He tells Wilbur this is what his Dad tells himself in hard times.

In the thick of all of this Wilbur ends up right in the clutches of the bowler hat man. As Wilbur asks why the bowler hat man is doing all of this he unfolds an interesting story. The bowler hat man is really Goob, Wilbur's old roommate from the orphanage. Because Wilbur worked far into the night on his inventions, poor Goob could never get a good night sleep. In consequence, he fell asleep during his baseball teams big final game and dropped what would have been the game winning catch. Filled with despair he spends the rest of his life doing "nothing", thinking he can never succeed. Years go by and he is still at the orphanage, having accomplished absolutely nothing with his life. All the while he hears on the radio stories of the great Wilbur Robinson who makes the world a better place with his brilliant inventions. Filled with anger he decides to seek out revenge on Wilbur and pay him back for all he did.

Upon receiving this explanation Wilbur realizes that he has great things he is capable of, that he himself is the man that would eventually make the future so incredible. He realizes that he has a choice; let failure rob him of his potential, or move forward and become the great Wilbur Robinson he knows is in there. Filled with realization he tells Goob, "If you would open your eyes you would see I didn't ruin your life, you did. All you had to do was let it go and keep moving forward." (sound familiar?) Goob responds with my favorite line of the movie, "Lets see, take responsibility for my own actions, or blame you? Ding ding ding! Blame you is the winner!"

Personally, this line cracks me up. In fact, its my favorite part of the movie. But lately I have been thinking about how true it all is in life. None of us can control our background or circumstances, but we can control how we deal with them. So often we let hard things determine the outcome of our character, our future, our very lives. When hard things strike we have a choice; to act or be acted upon, to be built or broken, to press on or fall back; in short, to be a Goob or a Wilbur. Wilbur saw his potential, and used that distant hope to press forward towards it, despite his past failures. In contrast, Goob let failure destroy his hope and shatter his view of all he could be. Let us be a Wilbur. Let us all look forward and realize all we can be. Let us all, no matter what happens, "keep moving forward", or as the scriptures tell us "press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God and all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the words of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus sayeth the Father; Ye shall have eternal life."(2 Nephi 31:20)  We all have the potential to do and be great. We all have the potential to live with our Father again. So, when failure strikes, don't let it get you down. Remember Wilbur Robinson, remember you can be great, remember to always keep moving forward.