You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all
my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.
Messages
have been tossed into the sea since before the time of Christ, many to chart
ocean currents but others as pleas for rescue or love. Recently,
I read a fictitious seafaring message, a quote from the 1999 romance film, Message in a Bottle, based on Nicholas
Sparks’ 1998 novel of the same name. It piqued my curiosity, so I did some
research on the movie. I read the review by critic Robert Ebert, who describes
the movie as “a film about a man and a woman who believe in great true love.
The man believes it's behind him; the woman hopes it's ahead of her. One of
their ideals in life is ‘to be somebody's true north.’” Ebert sums it up as a “tearjerker
that strolls from crisis to crisis” (Ebert).