Chapter 6
When Halitosis Can Push You Off a Bridge
I’ve loved comedian Richard Lewis for over thirty years, having fond memories of his standup on David Letterman as far back as the early 1980s. I immediately felt connected to his neediness, anxiety and depression. For example, he talked about how depressed he could get from foul odors and told a story of preparing for a date when his grandfather, reeking of insufferable halitosis, got right in his grandson’s face and wished Richard good luck on his romantic venture. Catching a whiff of his grandfather’s bad breath from hell had such an effect on Richard that he cancelled the date because all he could think of was his grandfather’s loathsome halitosis, which gave him thoughts of jumping off a bridge.
Viktor Frankl says we can choose our attitude toward life, that we are not a “plaything of circumstance.” But can Richard Lewis and I choose not to be repelled to the point of despondence and depression by rank odors? Our overreactions to stimulus seem to be part of our hardwiring and this is one type of example that makes me skeptical of Frankl’s claim that we are agents of free will.
Another type of example, one that I talk about with my students, was my “choice” to finish college. People I went to high school with congratulated me for getting my Masters and becoming a college professor at the young age of twenty-five. Part of their happiness for my success it seemed to me was based on their low expectations for my future. I was a troubled high school kid, self-conscious, anti-social, absorbed by bodybuilding. From the age of fourteen to nineteen I was the sidekick to Falco, a former high school classmate, three years my senior. He was equally troubled and had no future prospects evidenced by his short-term jobs at a margarine and ketchup factory, Toys R Us, a pork processing plant. One day I went with him to the unemployment office and Falco knocked on a nicotine-stained plastic partition to talk to a pinch-faced weasel about getting a job. The unemployment office and its joyless functionaries looked like a bastion from hell, a place I’d be doomed to frequent if I continued to hang out with Falco.
I was nineteen and on academic probation at the time. Standing in that hellish unemployment office, I saw this huge flashing red light bulb over my head and the warning flash possessed me with fear, which compelled me to break away from Falco and get serious about college.
I tell my students this story and make it clear that I don’t know if I made a choice to go to college. After the Light Bulb Moment, I didn’t make a choice to continue my education; I was driven by fear. Every morning I woke up and felt a cold gun pressed to my temple, coercing me to getting up early and going to college.
I had no choice in the matter. College would open opportunities for me. Not going to college would most likely put me at the mercy of the unemployment office. Was that a choice? I never saw it as one.
I also tell my students I was smart enough to know I wasn’t smart enough to make a good income without a college degree. I was no Bill Gates.
I make it clear to my students that lots of young people, many smarter than I, were in my circumstances, on a road to nowhere, but inexplicably they don’t have a Light Bulb Moment and they end up more vulnerable than they should have allowed themselves to be.
Did I choose to have a Light Bulb Moment? Did I choose to feel fear like a cold gun pressed to my head every day while I went to college? Did I choose to become nearly incapacitated by morbid thoughts when confronted with foul odors?
I don’t think so. I think I was hard-wired a certain way. So on the subject of free will I remain an agnostic, at best, and this casts doubt on my ability to teach the principles of my hero Viktor Frankl.
I'm starting to think, Jeff, that while on one level you are questioning your worthiness to teach Frankl, and on another you are asking whether you can actualize Frankl's principles in your life, on an even deeper level you are going through a process of transcending Frankl himself and coming to your own philosophy of life, that incorporates elements of Frankl, but also of CK, Dangerfield, and numerous other influences into a gestalt uniquely your own. Forgive my forthrightness, but it is almost like you are asking (yourself) for permission to move beyond Frankl, who seems to be your spiritual-philosophical father figure.
I mean, its almost like you have three choices: 1) You can stay as you are, and live in the pain of not living up to the ideals of Frankl, your spiritual-philosophical father figure; 2) You can actualize Frankl's ideals in your life, and be a "baby Frankl"; 3) You can forge your own path. Its probably clear where my bias is.
I'm with Freud in that I believe we all must "kill our father." Not literally, of course, and not even necessarily (or only) our actual biological father, but our FATHERS. This, I think, is what Frankl would want of you: find your own path. Don't seek to actualize his ideals, but find what is real for you and actualize that. In the end it isn't a negation of Frankl, but it is a transformation of what he is saying into something that is living and real for you.
Certainly not all of us can be great philosophers, but we can all actualize ourselves, we can accept and engage our uniqueness. This is something I occasionally tell my students: the universe doesn't want you (the student) to be the fellow classmate you're jealous of, or your parent that wants you to be a better version of them, or your older sibling, or your hero; the universe wants you to be you, as the unique expression that you are.
This is my personal philosophy of life, so I realize it is subjective - but it is one that serves everyone, that is embracing of any and all variants in that it asks us to actualize who we are, rather than who think we should be. It isn't the easy path, but it is the most fulfilling, I think. Be who you are! It sounds trite, but it is deeply powerful, I think - one of those core truths that we all overlook, and in so doing miss the main course.
Posted by: jonnybardo | 02/12/2014 at 08:48 PM
The way I see it, I'm trying to synthesize Frankl, Louis C.K. Dangerfield and others to make my own philosophy that makes me whole. To be fair to Frankl, his logotherapy has a humor component: The Paradox of Intent in which we take our fears and exaggerate them, to a grotesque and humorous level, to de-fang them. But I agree with a lot of your points.
Posted by: herculodge | 02/12/2014 at 09:51 PM