What would Kathleen Kelly Do?

Life lessons from "You've Got Mail"

One of my favorite holiday season traditions is watching my all-time favorite movie.

Picture this: A 200-year-old story plot (Jane Austen’s inimitable Pride and Prejudice, 1813), a few scenes borrowed from a Jimmy Stewart movie (Shop Around the Corner, 1940), the best romcom duo the world has ever seen (Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan), and throw them into the early days of chat-room-modem-interent-dating. Oh, and by the way add a young Dave Chappelle and Greg Kinnear in the mix. That, my friends, is the magic of 1998’s blockbuster, You’ve Got Mail.

What’s that you say? It’s not a holiday movie? Well, it’s a holiday movie like Die Hard is a Christmas movie. BTW, You’ve Got Mail has on up on Die Hard because there’s not one, but two, holidays mentioned. Every time I hear someone telling me “Happy Thanksgiving” I long to respond with “Happy Thanksgiving Back.”

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is a 30-something owner of a New York children’s bookstore. Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) is a 30-something businessman, the youngest generation of a large family-owned corporate chain of bookstores. The movie opens with them in the New World of online chat rooms in the early days of AOL. Loosely following the plot of Austen’s love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Kathleen and Joe go through misadventures of love and animosity on their way to their happily ever after.

Maybe it’s the nostalgia for that familiar dial-up tone, a throw-back to my own first experiences with this crazy thing that connected me instantly to people across the country and the world. Maybe it’s Meg Ryan’s adorable haircut, that became the inspiration for my own undergraduate hair style, or Tom Hanks’ simple charm. Or perhaps it’s simply because this 1998 romcom came out right when I was in the middle of navigating life, romance, career, identity, and the internet. Whatever the reason, I have lived my life by that movie for twenty-five years.

And made it my annual holiday tradition. If my kids weren’t taking up the family TV with video games and Kurt Russell’s Santa Claus, I would be watching it right now. It’ll be my “dirty little secret” after they go to bed. Right before Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, 1954.

Turning to this comforting staple, I ask myself once again “What would Kathleen Kelly do?” My favorite on-screen heroine has advice (still relevant after two decades) on everything from what to have from breakfast to what to do with your life.

1. If you’re worried, put up more twinkle lights.

Kathleen Kelly begins the movie filled with contagious optimism. She maintains this sunny outlook throughout trials, heartbreaks, setbacks, and disappointments. Her business, her livelihood, no less than her complete professional and personal identity, is threatened. She is stood up by a blind date. Breaks up with her boyfriend over Rudy Giuliani. And this little thing - she goes out of business. In the face of the “Big Bad Fox Books” corporate store, Kathleen is forced to close the bookshop her mother had established 42 years earlier.

Months before she closes, Kathleen and two of her faithful employees are decorating the store for Christmas. Birdie, the sixty-year-old best friend of Kathleen’s late mother, is looking at the latest sales print out. It’s dire. Their sales have dropped 30%. Her response?

“It’s a fluke. It will all work out. Meanwhile, I’m going to put up more twinkle lights.”

Kathleen’s ability to look on the bright side, while not getting sucked into toxic positivity, is exactly the thing that carries her from despair to hope. I have lived through times of hopeless despair, and times of white-knuckling-false-optimism. This is why I admire Kathleen Kelly’s (and Meg Ryan’s) ability to hold on to hope and positivity, while acknowledging the bitter heartaches of life. She can see the opportunities that the hardships provide, and yet, she remains grounded in the recognition that the hardships cause immense pain.

Later, in an email to her anonymous online “friend” she reveals her true feelings.

“‘It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees.’ Did you ever hear that Joni Mitchell song?

“Such a sad song, and not really about Christmas, but I was thinking about it as I put up my tree . . . missing my mother so much I almost couldn’t breathe.”

I want to hold on to hope while sitting in my despair as beautifully as that.

2. You are what you read.

One prevalent theme in You’ve Got Mail is books. Book business, writers, editors, book sellers, book stores, books, books, books - it’s everywhere.

When talking to Joe Fox about her experience of owning a children’s bookstore, she says, “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading does in your whole life.”

Books give us a pathway to an imagined world. They show us what else we could be, where else we could go, the endless possibilities of the how’s and why’s of our lives. Kathleen confesses that “most of what I see in life reminds me of something I read in a book.” Books connect reality to fantasy and vice versa. In Pride and Prejudice, for example, we see this played out in the events of the movie. Sometimes you’re the antagonist, and sometimes the protagonist. Love is not straight forward, and you can’t judge a person from your first impressions.

Again and again, I find myself meeting people who are a “Mr. Darcy,” or “Joe Fox” - those who end up being more than they first appear to be.

I experienced this first hand in my own early literary adventures. I know that my life has been influenced by the time I spent sitting in a pine tree in front of my house devouring Anne of Green Gables while dreaming of becoming a famous author and marrying my own dashing “Gilbert Blythe.” I even gave my daughter the middle name “Anne.”

3. Always be personal.

“It’s not personal, it’s business. What does that even mean? All it means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It was personal to a lot of people. And whatever else in life, it should start with being personal.”

Kathleen says this amazing and quotable line when Joe Fox arrives at her door to (kind of) apologize for “putting her out of business.” Like Mr. Darcy being put in his place by the forthright Elizabeth, Joe is humbled by this quote.

He loves her. She loves him. He knows that she is the same woman he has fallen for online. She loves the man she has been communicating with online for the better part of a year. Kathleen doesn’t know that the person in front of her, whom she loathes, is the same person she would run away with if he only asked.

Quite a conundrum.

But the lesson is: everything in life should start with being personal. Where is the “personal” in hours upon hours of voiceless, faceless, social media interactions? And what is “personal” about having 672 Facebook friends, or one million likes on your TikTok video, or 3,000 YouTube subscribers? You don’t know those people. They don’t know you.

I tried an experiment recently. As I went about my day, I counted all the people around me who were on their phones while doing something else. Couples at restaurants, feet away from each other, on their phones. When my husband and I get a date at a restaurant, away from the kids, you better believe we’re not wasting it on screens. People walking their dogs, phone in the other hand, head down as they walk past trees in full autumn leaf. More couples walking next to each other in a park, eyes on their phones. On and on it went. The hairdresser, waiting in line for coffee, at stoplights. Oblivious to the very real, very personal world around them.

Don’t you see that we are in the business of being personal? Put down your damn electronic jailor and make a personal contact with someone today. I promise you’ll feel better.

4. Take it to the next level.

A young Dave Chappelle is probably one of the most endearingly unexpected aspects of this movie. Think about it. In 1998 he had barely hit our collective consciousness. Chappelle’s Show didn’t air until 2003. For years of my binge-viewing of this movie, I sure didn’t know who he was. In fact, it wasn’t until his return to the limelight, much, much later, that I even connected him to the Dave Chappelle of Netflix special notoriety.

Although holding a relatively small, supporting role, his one-liners are among the best in the entire show. Here’s my favorite:

“I always take a relationship to the next level. If that works out, I take it to the next level after that. Until I finally reach the level where it becomes absolutely necessary for me to leave.”

This is, literally, the best dating advice I have ever heard. Hell, it’s in top ten best pieces of living advice I’ve ever heard. Even Alcoholics Anonymous agrees. One day at a time, one step at a time. You hear it everywhere.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

No day but today.

Do the next right thing.

A Google search for “quotes about taking life one day at a time” reveals entire websites devoted to that exact concept. I like to pretend that the concept came from the brilliant Dave Chappelle, but that would be unkind to whichever brilliant writer gave him that line. In fact, the real credit goes to thousands, millions, of great thinkers all the way back to Ancient Greece and pre-Buddhist China.

Stoicism: Don’t forget the past, neglect the present, or fear the future.

Taoism: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Abraham Lincoln: The best part of the future is that it comes one day at a time.

How are you living your life on the level in front of you, before taking it to the next level after that?

5. Joni Mitchell has the answer to everything. If she can’t solve your problems, The Godfather can.

Whatever you’re facing, Joni Mitchell has a song for it.

Trying to get over a breakup? Listen to Case of You.
Want to know where to go for vacation? California
Instructions for saving the world? Big Yellow Taxi
Missing someone at Christmas? River

Joe Fox makes fun of Kathleen Kelly, discretely, for being a Joni Mitchell fan. But don’t knock it before you try it. Mitchell has seriously pulled me through the darkest parts of my life. After my divorce, the Blue album played on repeat on my iPod. It made me feel better to have someone join me in the depths of despair. My annual viewing of You’ve Got Mail is only rivaled by my annual listening of River. When we had such things, I owned a CD with three different covers of the song.

If Joni Mitchell isn’t your style, though, perhaps The Godfather can help.

I had never seen this epic myself when I heard Joe Fox wax eloquent on the topic in a nostalgic Instant Messenger scene with Kathleen Kelly.

“The Godfather is the I Ching. The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The God father is the answer to any question.

“What should I pack for my summer vacation? ‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli.’
What day of the week is it? ‘Maunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wuansday.”
The answer to your question is, ‘Go to the mattresses.’

I have to admit I was not a little bit skeptical about the importance placed on the Corleone saga. Until I watched it. Do yourself a favor and binge all three movies as soon as you can. In fact, between turkey comas, and football, and parades, and contentious family, and pumpkin pie, give it a view right now. You won’t be sorry.

6. Forgive.

“I wanted it to be you.”

Joe Fox begins his relationship with Kathleen Kelly with a lie. “Just call me Joe,” he says enigmatically when he realizes they are business competitors. Thus follows a recipe, not for lasting love, but for a nemesis the world has never seen.

Insults, cheats, misrepresented quotes, news articles, PR, and protests. Corporate money against village charm. The “little guy” fighting The Man.

He stands her up. She slings media muck at him. He steals her customers, her authors, even her employees. She arranges community bans.

And yet.

There they are sitting at a sidewalk cafe for lunch. They joke about her mysterious online beau, which is really him. They go to farmer’s markets together, meet for hotdogs, discuss the likelihood of being a couple if “he wasn’t ‘Fox Books’ and she wasn’t ‘Shop Around the Corner.’”

When the final reveal comes, in Central Park where the path curves, all that pain and negativity melts away. Somewhere Over the Rainbow plays and she forgives.

Love triumphs. If Meg Ryan can forgive Tom Hanks, who can you forgive today?

Happy Thanksgiving Back.