In The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, main character Dave is a nerdy loner preoccupied with building a Tesla coil project in a dark basement. His roommate Bennet has other ideas about what it means to get the most out of college. In trying to get Dave to go party on his birthday, Bennet pitches him on his favorite animal: the gray wolf. “The gray wolf is a pack animal,” Bennet explains. “He must find a mate. He must hunt and grunt. He must participate!”
I would love to call my grandparents every day, but life gets busy. I try to ask them at least some of the many questions I have whenever I meet them. What was it like growing up after the war? How did the 70s feel to someone in their 30s? And so on. But I can’t participate as much in their lives as I would like, and that’s just life sometimes. Sad, but life.
A few years ago, someone in our family had a great idea: Let’s give grandma and grandpa a digital picture frame. We bought it, set it up, and now, we can all send photos to them whenever we’d like. A photo on a frame hits different than one in a chat message, but the process is just as simple. You open the app, pick a pic, add a caption if you want to, then hit “Send.” Moments later, it pops up on the frame in our grandparents’ kitchen and becomes part of the usual rotation. They might not see it instantly, but at some point over the next few days, they’ll notice: “Hey, there’s a new picture! Looks like the kids went to a Roman restaurant!” It’s almost like sending a tiny letter—a small but meaningful way of participating.
It’s great to want to be the best friend in history, and there surely are times to drop everything else and show up. But most of the time, most of us can only keep up with each other on occasion. Yet, even if you only see each other in person once a year, you can still participate. Participation can be small. A quick chat message. A song recommendation that made you think of them. Or a picture uploaded to a frame.
Later in the movie, Dave asks Bennet for his help. He got roped into an ancient war between powerful wizards, and it’s time for the good guys to win. When he finds Dave working on a solution to a magic problem with Becky, his childhood crush—whom Bennet has been encouraging him to go after a dozen times—the big guy breaks into a smile: “I don’t know what you’re into here, Dave, but whatever it is, you are definitely participating!”
