The Pharmacy(tm)

In the opening sequence to the movie “The Air I Breathe”, Forrest Whitaker’s character sets the tone with his very sober soliloquy:

“Sometimes, being totally fucked can be a liberating experience.”

It’s definitely therapeutic, I would add–that experience of having everything unravel–presuming you survive the experience. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” People sometimes quote Murphy’s Law when situations like these happen.

Despite one’s best plans, there’s always the odd chance of an absolute failure.

Is it really liberating? I doubt this is the first thing on people’s minds when they experience absolute failure first hand, however the liberation is probably best felt in “hindsight”.

Ahh, there’s the that problem again: time. Hindsight implies that you look back “in time” at yourself during another point in your life, and then mull over your experiences, maybe embellish a detail or two, but generally pick off some lessons you can learn from your “totally getting fucked” episode.

At this point, it will be instructive to bring up the story of a dear friend, who years ago, found herself in such a situation. I promised I’d never write about her, but bearing for a moment on the illusion of time, she is by now a far removed individual from herself several years ago. In short that bastard “time” allows me to say: who she was, is no longer who she IS.

So by writing about who she was, I’m techically still keeping my promise. Thank you “time” for letting me off the hook. Just to be technically on the safe side, I’ll keep her anonymous anyway.

The story is actually not technically a long one–although at the “time” I was witnessing it, it seemed to drag on forever. It begins in a chatroom, where two avid chatters Sarah and William meet online, and decide to meet (in by now what is commonly known as an E.B. or eyeball). As events would have it, the two become romantically inclined and proceed to have an occasionally rocky but suprisingly (at least to their friends) solid relationship.

At this point in “time”, both are freshly minted from school, Sarah from business school is slowly getting oriented with the twists and turns of the corporate arena, while William is finishing his aeronautics degree and eventually enters flight school, in preparation for his preferred occupation as a commercial pilot.

As the two mature in their chosen careers, and as niceties would have it, spend less and less time together, the subject of marriage, and a more long-term commitment begin popping more and more often into the picture. Three years pass, and by this time William has pursued a full-time job as a cargo plane pilot in a middle-eastern aviation company, and has not physically seen Sarah in nearly eighteen months.

One day, Sarah in a fit of boredom and loneliness decides to call William’s portable phone just out of the blue. Her boredom quickly fades into despair as a woman’s voice answers.

And this is it for Sarah, the point alluded to by Whitaker: “being totally fucked.”

It’s a quick blur for the poor girl. Within two hours she learns that everything she knew for years was wrong. William was no pilot, he flunked out of school years ago (even while they were dating), he was not flying cargo aircraft in the middle east as much as he was actually physically hauling cargo himself, and he was not the guy who was scared of marriage commitment that frustrated Sarah’s yearning all these years…

In fact he was getting married. To another woman: a flight attendant who was paying for his bills abroad.

I’ll skip the more sordid portion of Sarah’s story at this point and return to the “present time” where we find a different woman. By now Sarah has quit her old job and relocated to North America, where she has pursued further studies. She has successfully earned permanent resident status in her new home and is ready to pursue a new life and new horizons. No one in her immediate circle (including me) knows what happened to William since the grand revelation years ago, and no one has made any attempts to find out either.

So all in all, all’s well that ends well. Being totally fucked can be liberating indeed. Sarah has proven that wonderfully, and she has all my heartfelt congratulations.

Now I can announce what has made this post possible: Three interesting things occur at precisely the same “time”:

• I read about the wonderful development in Sarah’s life which I just shared above,
• I’m watching Forrest Whitaker utter that cool line above while watching Air I Breathe on DVD,
• and I catch an interesting glimpse on a friend’s page while browsing my Friendster account.

On the left, the image on the person’s page, and the following is her shoutout: 

“Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.”

I did send her a message about this intriguing combination. If I didn’t know her personally, “basketcase” might be the first thing on my head.

However, hard to believe myself, but this third item on the trio makes a wonderful close to the circle built up by the previous two items.

How many times can we identify “hitting ourselves with a hammer”? Personally I prefer: “hitting my head on a wall” myself, but the connotations are eeriely similar.

The wall or hammer are essentially “dramas” in our lives. Events that spark intense emotional response. In Sarah’s case, her relationship with William, and it’s stomach-turning conclusion is an example of a “drama”. Whitaker’s character describes dramas as “being totally fucked.” The oxymoron of being liberated by such an experience disappears when we take a closer look:

The main difference between being “totally fucked” and “liberated” is a fine thing. It isn’t (as we are normally conditioned to think) the object of the event itself, but more of our appreciation of the event in question. The fact that Sarah is living a happy life now did not reverse the events that happened prior, but surely her appreciation of those events have changed as dramatically as her life has changed.

Dramas are a direct result of our intentions. What we want, we get. However, it hurts us when we want something that isn’t meant for us. Our emotions are in turmoil over events that don’t agree with our purpose. Those same emotions are pleasant with events that do agree with our purpose.

What changes in between times of despair and hope? Our intentions change. Tricky thing–the fine line between a Sarah in despair over the loss of her life, and the Sarah who is heartily looking forward to her new one, is a change of intention. Instead of dwelling on the crappiness of the past, you look towards the promise of the future.

I’ve thanked “time” for allowing me a cop out to share Sarah’s story here. But again, I have to bid time farewell once more–because time doesn’t exist, remember? Remove time from the observation, and we can look at Sarah instead of dwelling on the crappiness of her life NOW, she instead looks towards the promise of her life NOW.

Drop time from the equation, and you have within your grasp a very potent power. The past and future do not exist, only an ever changing moment of NOW. 

From being totally fucked NOW to being liberated NOW, is just a function of changing your intentions…

NOW.