I just got through watching "Star Trek: First Contact". It's interesting how
things can effect me differently at different times in my life: the first time
(or two) I watched it, it was just a movie. Yes, some good Moby Dick references,
but nothing special there.
On the other hand, consider "Star Trek II: The
Wrath of Khan". Yes, more Moby Dick references, but Khan "spoke" to me on
several levels. Kirk deals with growing older, Spock sacrifices himself (that's
not a spoiler, the movie's been out for decades!), and Kirk has to deal with an
estranged son. I've watched that movie pretty much every birthday since I was a
teenager, which means I've watched it about 20 times. Every year, I "renewed"
some feelings and reconsidered how I approach life as a whole.
It's hard
to examine ourselves. There's no good mental or emotional mirror available. We
catch only glimpses, like looking at the reflection of your own car in the
chrome bumper on the truck in front of you -- you might notice that your
headlight is burned out, but it's hard to tell how exactly many bugs are
splattered on your paint.
One way I can look at myself, a little, is
disconnecting myself from my reality for a short time -- like watching a movie.
I can take a little breather from my own life and when I come back, notice a few
things about myself that maybe I didn't notice before. It's like going outside
to take the trash out, and when you come back in the house, you realize it
smells like the last meal in there. You didn't notice it before, because you
were smelling it all the time and became desensitized. You have to step out of
it and come back in to see what you were missing.
Today, watching First
Contact, I had a little more empathy for Captain Picard / Captain Ahab. I
wondered if I had a white whale of my own. The words "And he piled upon the
whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If
his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it" struck
something of a chord with me this time.
Picard and Ahab each had
something taken from them. Picard had his humanity taken. Ahab had his leg
taken. I've had things taken from me. These losses hurt. They wound deeply. They
cannot be ignored, nor forgotten. Nor, I think, should they. We should not be
doormats. We deserve better than that.
But there's the question of how to
react to loss. Melville seems to be saying Ahab should have just left well
enough alone and led a happy, albeit legless, life. If we are to "learn Ahab's
lesson", and treat every big problem like a soul-swallowing white whale, we as
individuals and humanity as a whole would never accomplish anything though! What
if the Founding Fathers figured fighting for independence was their white whale,
and just gave up and led quiet lives as obedient subjects? What if Britain
figured Hitler was their white whale, and just let the Nazis roll in?
The
heros of our world are people that fought against overwhelming odds -- Gandhi,
Mandela, Luther (both the white one and the black one). So what separates them
from Ahab... the fact that they were successful, and Ahab was not? Or is there
more to it?
This is the question that "troubles" me now. I don't know if
"trouble" is the right word. I'm chewing on it, experimentally, like I chew on
the first bite of a steak. I've had a lot of bad steak in my life, but every
once in a while I get a really good one. Thus, it's mostly trepidation... tinged
with a little bit of hope.
So: how does one separate the worthy goals
from the white whales? Chew, chew. Hmm.
I think it may have something to
do with emotion. Ahab let his anger fill him; there was no room for anything
else. His world shrunk until it contained only him, and the white whale -- his
ship and his crew be damned.
I don't want to live in a small world. There
are too many good things out there, waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. Anger
and other blind emotions shrink my world, and I resent that. Sometimes my world
shrinks pretty small before I realize what's happening, though I think perhaps
I'm getting better at recognizing it (at least, I hope). Making my world larger
again is more difficult, but I'm working on it.
And yet, the things taken
from me still hurt. And, I don't want that cursed white whale to go on hurting
others. How to choose whether to go whale hunting, or stay on
shore?
There's a problem with the human brain; we all see the world
around us through our own lens, but the vexing thing is we can't turn that lens
upon ourselves. What's worse, and what has become so painfully brought to my
attention now, is that most people don't realize they have a lens at all. (At
least I didn't.) They assume that what they see is reality (at least, I did).
But sometimes, reality is something else entirely.
I think my new
birthday movie will be The Matrix. Neo thought he lived in the real world, just
as I once thought I did. We were both forced to have our eyes opened, and not of
our own choosing. But, eventually we were both grateful for it. For me, it
(painfully) called attention to the fact that I have lens. And as we learned
from Frank Herber's Dune, "the first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its
existence".
In First Contact, Picard is brought back from the brink of
insanity by Lily. Lily was not afraid to tell Picard exactly what she thought.
She had the guts to hold a mirror up to Picard, and he didn't like what he saw
in that mirror. Picard needed someone, or something, outside of himself to get a
new perspective on his own actions. Perhaps we all need a Lily to hold the
mirror up to ourselves -- we might not like what we see, at first. And that
mirror may itself be distorted and untrustworthy. But I think it is folly to
refuse to look in any mirrors.
Perhaps that's where Ahab went wrong -- he
dismissed out of hand the pleas of his officers and crew. But by the same token,
we also can't be pushed around by the other people in our lives. We should not
abdicate (and I use that word advisedly -- we are each masters of our own
destiny) our own free will. So I'm still at square one: how to decide if I have
before me a worthy foe to defeat, or a bloody white whale.
I think it's
part of growing up. We learn to speak, but then we mature and learn when to be
silent. We learn to make the right choices, but then we mature and realize that
we also have to chose what is right. Not only does black and white give way to
shades of gray, but then we find there's color too!
I guess I'm gray man
feeling a little lost in a color world. I'm glad for the color though; I didn't
realize what I was missing. I may not find the right color; there may not be a
right color. But I know I don't want to go back.
So. It may take me a
long time to distinguish white whales from stepping stones. I may never figure
it out. How do you keep your eye on the prize without getting tunnel
vision?
These questions are tough, just like a lot of steaks. I'll keep
chewing on them.
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