Melvin is struggling.
His whole life has been a struggle.
He is obsessively compulsive.
I fall off into the pit of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - see this Mayo Clinic article) myself.
Though I choose to see it as CDO (those letters really must be in alphabetical order!)
In this scene from the motion picture As Good as it Gets, Melvin Udall has burst frantically into the office of his psychiatrist, has not found the answers that he was looking for, and has stormed out into the patient waiting area.
He doesn't know these people, but he assumes that they are like him. He is probably right.
He is still looking desperately for help, for relief, for normalcy.
So, he addresses the waiting patients with an exasperated rhetorical question.
"What if this is as good as it gets?"
The most striking element of the whole scene . . . is when one of the patients responds . . . "Ohh."
Did you hear that? Watch the clip again.
If you have ever allowed yourself to believe that it's all downhill from here . . . my best days are over . . . nothing is left but the blues . . . then, "Ohh" just about sums up your life.
This, however, is an uplifting movie. It does not have a classic happy ending, and at the conclusion of the film you know that there are still going to be many difficult days ahead for all of the characters.
But, things are different. Melvin has changed. His good times have increased and he has experienced the kinds of relationships that anyone who knows him might have thought impossible.
Great things still await me in this life.
And no, I will not allow myself to believe that my life is over until I am drawing my very last breath. And then . . . I expect my life to get better than it has ever been before.
I believe that there is something next.
This is not as good as it gets.
