Since everything can’t be about zombies, right? Unless of course it’s all about the walking dead, and I’ve not capitalized that on purpose.

NEDS tells the story of John McGill, a wee boy whose life may have been quite different had he not been born into the drawn out apocalyptic world of poverty and working class hardship in Glasgow. It’s no different than any other city though, where potential and privilege are proportionately related to success and survival. It’s really a simple relationship between who you are and who you might have been, and the dictates of surroundings. It’s what you want versus what you actually need. It’s aspirations and expectations and hope versus reality.

John just wasn’t made for the reality he was born into. He had to be someone else. NEDS is about as far from the Forrest Gump mythos of rising above and beyond as a film can get. It’s not a thinly veiled fairy tale. There is no veil at all. It’s real. He had to adapt to the real. Therein lies the tragedy of what the literary sorts call the human condition. Sometimes there is privilege. Often it just comes down to getting by.

And therein is the story that brings us back to The Walking Dead. Rick Grimes and the others in TWD keep up a back and forth about what happens when they get back to “the real world” and pointing out that they are already in it. They keep going back to the security and hope of the pre-apocalyptic planet and the idea that it can not just be salvaged but rebuilt. Then they circle back around to the notion that it was all an illusion to begin with and they’re going to have to build something brand new, armed with what they’ve learned.

“This is what the world is now.”

Similarly, the future that John McGill’s Auntie Beth refers to when telling her family to smile and say “success” while posing for a graduation photo, bears very little resemblance to what they actually have to work with. It’s a dream and when John is ejected from his middle class friend’s family’s house and labelled a NED he is left with a truth he’s going to have to live with. The dreamy future-world doesn’t want him. He’s back to the projects and “what the world is now.”

Bleak, right? You can’t run away from the truth. Not to say that there’s no way out but you’re in it while you’re in it and often until you’re done. No spoilers here – it’s a good wee film but fair warning that it’s not a feel-good family hit. It’s not Disney. It’s Glasgow.

Or Brooklyn

Or Los Angeles.

Or wherever.

That brings us back to the one question that The Walking Dead hasn’t answered going deep into the 8th season. Can you get your old self back once you’ve adapted to your reality? Are there parts of yourself you’ve lost that you will never regain when circumstances no longer demand the traits you’ve acquired? Are you better off with the changes you’ve made if you do finally escape? Yes, this is all one big question. Can you come back from the dead? I can’t really answer that big question.

The Crocodiles who’ve guided me through the last 10+ years are fond of saying that a pickle can never again be a cucumber and I’m inclined to believe that’s true. The key might just be to accept what is and make the best of being a pickle. Find value in being a pickle. It’s not as silly as it sounds but it isn’t easy either. I do speak from experience. You can find your place in the world as it is, but some people really hate pickles and you have to live with that. You work with what you’ve got and do what you’ve got to do to get by. Fortunately most of us have more than wee John to get by on.

NEDS doesn’t break new ground but it’s never a bad thing to keep repeating the vital message that nobody is born hard. Everybody was, at some point in time, someone’s baby. Everyone was born someone else’s hope for a better future. A boy can get labelled by any other number of people across the course of his life as a lost cause or this or that but for a brief window in time he was all things bright and wonderful in the world.

John.

You.

Me.

It’s not that you have to burden yourself to living up to those beginning expectations. That’s going to be really difficult under the best of circumstances. Just try to find something that you can work with without getting lost, and remember that you can never ever go back to the starting line. Anything you build will have to be brand spanking new.

And you’re going to have to find some degree of self-forgiveness.

Selah.