Living the Braveheart Life: Finding the Courage to Follow Your Heart

by Randall Wallace
Published: 2015

My mom, a devoted daughter of a Scottish immigrant - though her father was only 3 or so when the family left Scotland and arrived in New York, she was mostly raised by her Scottish grandfather and Granny - was very critical of the film, Braveheart. I was dismayed, as, like many, I absolutely loved it. The fantasy, the romance, the bravery, humor, the cause, the loss. Mel Gibson didn't hurt, either.

But mom found fault in a range of historic errors, conflations, and arrogant lack of accuracy. Nobody wore woad into battle by the time William Wallace was fighting; the kilt wasn't popularized until later; Wallace was an educated elite, not a man-of-the-people farmer. 

But, the movie resonated and was a major success, though it failed to win the writer the Academy Award many felt he deserved (and it did win Best Picture and Best Director for Mel). 

So I was hopeful that this book would contain more of that type of bold insight into the best of human kind and the the-hell-with-you righteous anger that many of us are beginning to feel as we watch the world set itself alight right now. 

It sort of does, yet largely does not.

It is more gentle, more aspirational, perhaps a little more defeated, and it calls upon the softer side of Christianity that perhaps Braveheart might represent.

The author has simply set out to chat with us, the readers, as he lays out his life experiences and explains why he chose Christ as the source of strength and purpose. He doesn't get into the nitty-gritty of his life's details, but rather glosses over them, hinting at the moments of despair and sorrow that followed whatever those particulars might have been (we know his marriage broke up, and that it was a major set-back - but we never learn how or why, for example). He thanks his parents for their examples, and makes sure we know that neither was perfect, but good enough to do as a parent should in raising a child. We know that he has good friends who aided him when it was needed. We know that he had failures, took crazy chances, and followed his heart.

He seems almost reluctant to carry on too much about the face that he was not only the driving force behind Braveheart, but that he has We Were Soldiers, Secretariat, and The Man in the Iron Mask to his Hollywood credits, as well. Not bad. 

He does succeed in painting a portrait of a man who has both been humbled by life, and who remains humble in spite of his highly productive and successful life. And perhaps above all, the humility is his clear testament to the power of his faith in his life. That such a successful and notable person can still take the time, however brief, to counsel all of us on remaining steadfast and humble, is his demonstration that it's possible. He did it.