I wrote this article almost a year ago, and through it, I came in touch with one of the most beautiful souls I have met and have the pleasure of calling her my friend.

This publication is a callback to the original chat it kickstarted.

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These clips are a treasure trove of emotional depth, exploring relationships, feelings, and duty.

I strongly suggest you watch the clips before reading the narrative and the following breakdown.

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It all begins with Cole's journey from the Northeastern US to California. His marriage to Luisa, his second wife, is in turmoil, and he is still haunted by the memory of his first love, Alison.

They have a kid together after the previous drowning of their first child, which created distress in the couple. They tried to make it work, but it eventually did not. Luisa, his new wife, picked Cole up and emotionally got him back on track.

However, he is finding himself lost. So, like his dad, he decided to take a necessary break from his hometown to clear his head and find answers to the questions that haunt him.

He meets Nan, the maker of the surfboard that Cole's dad (Gabriel) loved to bits. Following in his footsteps, Nan initially recognises Cole's resemblance to Gabriel.

Instinctively, she sussed out why he went cross-country to visit the town his dad had originally stayed in for a month as a retreat.

Nan's confession about her affair with Gabriel, while he was still married to Cherry, was a shock. Her reminiscences of Gabriel and their relationship starkly contrasted with Cole's perception of his father.

When Nan asked if Gabriel and Cherry were still together, she tried to contain her emotional distress from hearing Cole say his dad was dead.

You can already sense that Gabriel and Nan's story is much deeper than the understated summer love she mentioned to Cole. She decides to excuse herself.

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After feeling trapped by Nan's protégée, Delphine, Cole wants to discover why Gabriel came to California. His dad originally left to find answers to his questions, but his son now wants to know what they were, as he is also finding himself lost.

The first reveal is that Nan admits that Gabriel's marriage was her biggest problem. She reveals to Cole the big box of love letters from Gabriel she had collected over 10 years, encapsulating a much deeper aspect of the relationship than she had previously suggested.

She goes on to admit that she thought Gabriel was her soul mate for some time. Cole then realises that the logo on his dad's surfboard represents Nan and Gabriel's respective first letters. The bond they shared was more profound than Cole had ever imagined, and that surfboard was his favourite thing, the proxy symbol of what bonded him to Nan.

Nan goes on to explain how they originally met. Her nostalgic memories of Gabriel show a rather solitary individual. She eventually decided to approach him and suggested taking a picture of him. They spent their first night together and never left each other's pockets for the next 4 months.

From the rather dour individual he was, Gabriel softened up thanks to Nan and completely let go. He then goes on to completely emotionally open himself to her.

However, Cherry, his wife, was pregnant and threatened to kill herself unless he came back, and then he left.

They continued writing to one another, but the content of the letters from Gabriel was sadder and bitter. He ended up having more kids, felt trapped, and became miserable, reminiscing about his time with Nan.

Nan knew that he would not leave her family. With her California woo-woo background, she devised an exorcism for Gabriel to stop loving her, as it was killing him from within. To eventually forget about her.

Cole queried on the effectiveness of the exorcism. Nan confirmed it worked as his last task to prove Gabriel was not in love with her was to send all her letters back, which he did.

Eventually, Cole felt empathetic for Nan and how their relationship did not work. Nan was pretty philosophical, saying they wanted different things and that she had no regrets.

Intrigued by the exorcism, Cole decides to perform one himself to forget about his ex-wife Alison and save his marriage. However, he eventually realises that not only did it not work, but it made it worse.

It is the end of his stay, and he accepts Nan's offer to see her final letter to his dad.

"Now you have finished all 4 tasks; the exorcism is complete; if it worked, then you no longer love me; send me these letters back so I know. I remain yours, mind, body and soul, Nan."

Cole then realises that his dad did not send the letters to Nan. To Nan's deer-in-the-headlights look, he reveals to her that the letters were postmarked two years after his death.

To Nan's confusion, he strongly suggests that his mom must have returned the letters to her after reading them, hoping Nan would think they had come from him.

Nan does her best not to break down in front of Cole, realising that what she had convinced herself of was a farce after she told herself to move on.

"How did he die?" she asks Cole.

"He hung himself on my 10th Birthday, a couple of weeks after you sent that last one".

She then completely collapses.

While returning to his car on his way back to the North Eastside, he admits to Delphine that he is not going back to his wife, whom he acknowledges is a wonderful woman, because he has realised he is genuinely in love with somebody else—his ex-wife. He adds that his wife does not deserve someone who is physically there but not mentally there.

Despite his best efforts for the past four years to do the right thing and get Alison out of his mind, it never worked, and he does not want to wake up 10 years later because he wanted to do the right thing and just speak his heart out to her.

LESSONS:

Gabriel is the prototype of a solitary man driven by duty. He is also not the most emotionally communicative person—emotionally closed off. But he did not know how to manage his emotions and feelings once he found someone who could open up his carapace.

The feeling is so intoxicating that it becomes like a drug; he realised he had become co-dependent on Nan as the sole person capable of making him see a part of life that he had not experienced before.

However, he cannot deny himself and his sense of duty to his wife and kids, which he needs to take on himself again for the benefit of others at his own cost. The family takes precedence over his self-interest.

The duty of doing the right thing ended up having him fall into alcoholism, being abusive and overall not the best of role models out of hatred for himself and regrets of having denied himself for what he truly wanted, with the climax being his suicide.

On the other hand, despite her brave face, Nan only shows more evidence of her previous efforts to repress her feelings for Gabriel.

She wanted him to forget about her because doing so would make it easier for her to downgrade the meaning of what they had previously had and better live in her present situation.

However, the correspondence was a constant reminder of what could have been. The weight of the words in Nan's and Gabriel's imaginations only reinforced their idyllic story, giving it more meaning through the idealisation process that many people in Long-Distance Relationships go through.

The realisation that all of these years and the tragic death of Gabriel only reinforced the mythical figure on top of the power of the unclosed loop of what it could have been.

Regarding Gabriel's wife, Cherry, she has the ungrateful role of being the wife he realised he subsequently settled for.

He eventually realised he had missed what he thought was true love. And so did Nan. Gabriel was emotionally open through his newfound romanticism; Nan was mirroring, whilst still trying to manage herself emotionally, being the more pragmatic of both to eventually realise she was as deep as Gabriel in that emotional whirlwind.

Unknowingly, Cole was replicating the same mental journey as his dad, only to find the answer he was seeking.

There is no point in fighting for something that is not there out of guilt or duty when your feelings are just not there.

Knowing his moodiness and depressive inclinations, he understood that if he followed in his dad's footsteps, he would end up like him. So be it if it is at the cost of his wife, Luisa.

When it comes to Luisa, she also plays the ungrateful role of the woman who picks up a guy when he is emotionally down (after the break-up with his ex-wife), only to be dumped once her husband eventually finds his senses.

The reality of this strategy as a girl is that you can get a better prospect than usual, but eventually when he gets back into a more stable state of mind the only reason he will stay with the girl is one of guilt or duty, not out of the undying love that the girl helped him forget about but to which the contrast between both relationships anchors the disappointment she ends up becoming the symbol of.

Cole ended up in the same situation as Gabriel, like Father, like Son.

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The real lesson in all of this is that whether it is Cole, Gabriel or Nan, the right thing to do on the surface is not always the case. Does it mean that the endeavours will work?

Not always.

But holding back what one truly wants is just accruing negative interests; you end up paying through regrets.

It is less about whether or not the desired outcome is reached, but whether you have been truthful to yourself and have not suppressed or repressed your inner feelings towards someone to always live in the what-ifs had you decided to hold yourself back.

Because, one way or another, the unaddressed feelings you decided to consciously or subconsciously hold back will resurface through different means.

You will find yourself in situations where there will be an arbitrage between your Self-Interest and that of your family or whichever close group you find yourself in.

Life is about trade-offs.

You cannot entirely deny your Self-Interest too much; otherwise, it will indirectly negatively impact the Collective Interest (family/friendship group).

However, you cannot entirely deny the Collective Interest, as it will negatively impact your Self-Interest.

It is about simultaneously assessing what would make the most pragmatic and self-fulfilling sense.