"Masters Of Sex:" Have The Courage To Ask Questions

"We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions."

Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements:  A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom

Have you ever noticed that a 2-hour movie would be over in 10 minutes if one character simply turned to another and asked, "So. Why are you upset?" Instead, we get two hours of guessing, recriminations, gossip and heartbreak before the final reel when the two characters realize that their assumptions were faulty and fall into one another's arms as the credits roll.

The same thing happens in real life. Instead of asking why someone appears angry, we make assumptions (that is, we guess) as to why he might be angry. Instead of asking why a phone call wasn't returned, we make assumptions like, "I must not be important" or "She doesn't like me."  Instead of asking why someone appears to be scowling, we attempt to "read" the body language behind the apparent scowl and assume that we've done something to upset him.

We spend endless hours conjecturing with friends as to why someone didn't smile at us or why our email wasn't answered or why we were told "no" when we expected a "yes" instead of simply asking the person whom we feel offended by, "why didn't you do (what I expected)?"

Silence isn't golden.  Unless we ask why a person did or did not do something, we are left only with our guesses and our imagination. And these guesses and imaginings can damage our relationships.

Here's a real life example that had a happy ending 55 years later than would have occurred had one person simply asked, "So. How did you like the flowers?"

The story is told in the book (although not in the television movie based on the book), "Masters Of Sex," the story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson who became famous and infamous for their sex research during the last decades of the 20th century.

In 1937, when he was 22 years old, Bill Masters fell deeply in love with Geraldine Oliver whom he called Dody.

At one point in their courtship, Dody was hospitalized near her home  in Buffalo, New York. Bill was attending medical school in Rochester and, as soon as he heard the news, drove all night to be beside Dody.

Unfortunately, when he arrived at the hospital, Bill was told that he couldn't see Dody because she was recuperating and couldn't be disturbed. Bill left to drive back to school, but first left flowers and a note with the night nurse with instructions to please be sure and give them to Dody as soon as possible. The flowers were an elaborate and expensive assortment and Bill had gone to considerable trouble to get them.

Weeks later, Bill returned to Buffalo to see Dody after she had left the hospital. Dody seemed distracted and responded perfunctorily to conversation. Bill was dying to ask why she was being stand offish and how she liked the flowers, but never did. Assuming Dody had lost interest in him during her hospitalization and subsequent convalescence, Bill and Dody drifted apart.

Over the next 55 years, Bill got married, had two children and divorced after 28 years to marry his sex researcher partner, Virginia Johnson to whom he was married for 22 years.

In 1991, at the age of 76, Masters asked Johnson for a divorce so that he could marry the love of his life. He had run into Dody completely by accident. Neither had been looking for the other. Dody had herself been married, divorced and widowed from a second marriage.

55 years after the fact, Bill Masters found out that the night nurse had never given Dody the flowers and he never asked about it. Dody had assumed it was Bill who had lost interest and her silence was her way of communicating her hurt.

It took 55 years for Dody and Bill to be reunited, something that could have happened 55 years earlier, had he simply asked, "So. How did you like the flowers?" or she had simply asked, "Why did you ignore me when I was in the hospital?"

It takes courage to ask questions. But life is short and it saves a lot of time and grief.

Long Day's Journey Into Night: What Might Have Been

"What the hell was it that I wanted to buy?"

That line is said by James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play (made several times into a movie), "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

James Tyrone is a stand in for O'Neill's real life father, James O'Neill, who made a fortune playing the title role in "The Count of Monte Cristo" over and over and over again. When he tried to take on different roles, audiences wouldn't accept him. For James O'Neill, this was the central tragedy of his life.

It's the tragedy that Marlon Brando, playing a failed boxer, echoes so beautifully in "On The Waterfront" when he says to his brother, played by Rod Steiger, "I could have been a contender."

James is convinced he could have been one of the leading actors of his generation had he not been so focused on pursuing the almighty dollar. As the poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”

In a long monologue, James reminisces on what might have been had he pursued being the best rather than the richest. He believes he would have been a contender for the title, "greatest actor of his generation." He concludes the monologue with the statement I quoted at the top of this blog.

In his famous poem, "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost notes that "Two roads diverged in a wood" and proceeds to ruminate on what might have been had he taken a different road than the one he took.  Two roads always diverge. And we will always consider what might have been had we taken the road other than the one we took. We'll never know. For sure, we would have ended up in a different place. But would we have been happier? Would we have been more content?

I often think of what might had been had I made different choices. But I didn't. And James didn't either.  For that matter, neither did Frost or Whittier or Marlon Brando or any of us. We made the choices we made. And what keeps us unhappy now is not the choices we made but the story we tell ourselves about those choices. How we would have been happier, richer, more content, famous, respected and admired had we only pursued a different road.

No matter which road we take, we will have cut ourselves off from a different life than the one we chose. But we can only have what we chose. We can never have in reality what we only imagine.

The question is not, "What might have been" but, rather, "What now?" What choices will define us now? What road will we take now from among the unlimited number of roads that are before us?

Philomena and The Railway Man: Freedom's Just Another Word For Forgiveness

Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Freedom's also just another word for forgiveness.

It takes so much courage to forgive the difficult people in our lives. Yet until we forgive, we can never put the past completely behind us and create a future free from the constraints of the past.

One reason I think it's so hard to forgive is because we confuse forgiveness with condoning what was done to us. They're not the same.

Two recent movies have reminded me of the courage it takes to forgive and the freedom that becomes available when we do. Both movies are based on true events.

"The Railway Man" is the story of Eric Lomax, a British engineer fighting in Singapore during World War II. His unit is captured by the Japanese and taken to Thailand where they are forced into slave labor to build the Thai-Burma railroad.  Lomax is tortured. His forearms are smashed and he is repeatedly waterboarded.

Lomax survives, but he is haunted by what happened to him. He suffers what today we would call post traumatic stress disorder, repeatedly reliving the torture.

In 1980, Lomax discovers that Takashi Nagase, one of his torturers, is alive in Japan. Lomax tracks him down with the intent of killing him. Instead, he realizes that  the war will never truly end for him until he forgives his tormentor.  Lomax does so.  The scene where he and Nagase embrace is unbelievably moving.

Here's a video of the real Lomax and the real Nagase:

In "Philomena," the teenage Philomena Lee becomes pregnant and is sent by her father to live in an Abbey where she is held in virtual servitude. The nuns force her to give up her son for adoption.

As an adult, Philomena searches for her son. She is joined by a newspaper man thinking this would make a great story.

Philomena discovers that her son, renamed Michael by the American family that adopted him, died of AIDS at the age of 43. Knowing he was dying, Michael visited the Abbey to search for his birth mother. The nuns knew where Philomena was, but refused to let her son know. They had also refused to let Philomena know that her son was looking for her. Michael died thinking Philomena was uninterested in finding him.

When the truth is uncovered, the newspaper man is outraged and shouts curses at the nuns. He expects Philomena to do the same. But in an extraordinary act of generosity and courage,  Philomena forgives the nuns, saying that she doesn't want to live her life full of hate. She knows that, like Eric Lomax, her suffering will never end unless she forgives.

It takes so much courage to let go of the past hurts done to us. The movie examples are of people who were tortured and lied to. But our daily interactions with difficult people are much more mundane: The person who treats us like we don't exist at meetings or talks over us.  The person who butts in front of us in line without apology. The person who tailgates us because we won't drive faster. The person who criticizes us without regard for our feelings. The person who calls us stupid or lazy or some name that hurts. The person who is arrogant or stubborn or opinionated or, in short, difficult to get along with. Sometimes we hold on to these daily slights for years.

I remember meeting a man who had spent years blaming his ex wife for their divorce. One day, having had no contact with her since the divorce, he called her. When she answered, he apologized for blaming her. He took responsibility for the divorce. Not 50% of the responsibility. 100%. He told his ex wife that he was genuinely sorry.

When he was done speaking, there was a long pause. Finally,  his ex wife said to him (and this is a quote. It was such a surprising comment that I wrote it down), "I was prepared to hate you for the rest of my life. What am I going to do now?"

A great question. A hole is left when we give up resentment. What are we going to do now? I think the answer is that now we can be free and powerful. Now we can create a future free from the past that was holding us back. Now we are free to be extraordinary.

"Six Degrees Of Separation:" The Desire For Fame and Riches

"Isn't that what everyone wants? A new world?"
Ouisa Kittridge (Stockard Channing) in the movie Six Degrees of Separation

I was stunned when I first saw the movie "Six Degrees of Separation" in 1993 in a theater in Evanston, Illinois. I was visiting my sister who had a party to go to. I went to the movies. I remember walking to my car afterwards in a daze. At the time, I didn't understand why. Now I know.

The lives of the rich and famous seem so wonderful.  F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby said, "The rich are different from you and me" to which Ernest Hemingway purportedly responded, "Yes. They have more money,"  suggesting that there's nothing special about them.

Yet I want to be them. I want that "new world" of glamor and excitement and privilege that they seem to possess.  I imagine it would be a life of few problems. I know the rich and famous have problems. But they live their problems in Paris and great restaurants, wearing designer clothes and going to fabulous parties. I imagine it would be great.

This is the story told by Six Degrees of Separation. It is the story of Paul (Will Smith) who wants what I want. Things do not end well for Paul yet, to the end, he wants what Flan (Donald Sutherland) and Ouisa (Stockard Channing) Kittridge have even though Ouisa expresses surprise that anyone would want their lives. Perhaps she needs to trade my house for hers for a few weeks.

Six Degrees Of Separation begins one evening with Flan and Ouisa  entertaining a South African millionaire, Geoffrey (Ian McKellen). Flan is an art dealer without a gallery. He matches wealthy individuals who have art to sell but don't want to sell on the open market with buyers who want to keep their purchases secret. Geoffrey is a potential customer that the Kitteridges are trying to cultivate.

Their New York City apartment overlooks Central Park. I would buy that apartment if I had the several million dollars it would cost. Expensive art adorns the walls. Expensive furniture adorns the apartment. Expensive clothing adorns the Kittridges.

The doorbell rings and the doorman admits Paul into this life of elegance and privilege. Paul, dressed in shirt and tie and looking every bit like an Ivy League preppy, tells a story of being stabbed and robbed of all his money in Central Park. He even has the knife wounds to prove it. Having no where to spend the night and no money for a hotel room until his father arrives in the morning, Paul has sought out the Kitteridges, remembering that their children, who Paul says he knew at Harvard, had told him where they live. When they ask Paul who his father is, Paul reluctantly reveals that his father is the famous actor Sidney Poitier.

The Kitteridges are charmed by Paul and his connection to his illustrious father. Paul is erudite and prepares a great dinner for the Kitteridges and Geoffrey who is equally charmed and agrees to spend millions on a painting Flan has been trying to sell to him. The Kitteridges offer Paul a bed for the night, knowing that Paul's charm has contributed to Geoffrey agreeing to buy the painting.

We soon learn that Paul is not the son of Sidney Poitier. He is a gay hustler who was picked up one rainy night in Boston by Trent Conway, a gay friend of the Kittridge children. Paul trades sex with Trent for information about the Kittridges and other wealthy families who Trent knows. Using that information, Paul concocts the story of being Sidney Poitier's son and insinuates himself into the lives of the wealthy.  So badly does he want that life that he has even stabbed himself to support his story of being mugged in Central Park.

I completely identified with Paul's  desire to create a new life for himself. While this is, certainly, my personal desire, it may be thought of as an American desire. We are the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of people who came here from other countries to reinvent themselves. To find a "new world." Our culture is based on reinvention. In fact, America use to be known as the "new world" juxtaposed against the "old world" of Europe.

Interestingly, John Guare who wrote the screenplay as well as the play on which the movie is based, wrote the story of Six Degrees Of Separation after reading in the newspaper about a con man who insinuated himself into the lives of wealthy New Yorkers by claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier. Art imitating life.

I guess I'm not the only one who wants that life.

"Casualties Of War" Is Our Everyday War

In the 1989 movie, "Casualties of War," Michael J. Fox plays Private Max Eriksson, a soldier in Sergeant Tony Meserve's platoon during the Vietnam War. Sean Penn plays Meserve. 

The platoon has been out in the field for quite some time and wants nothing more than to rest in the barracks when they are told that they are going to shortly be sent out again. Meserve decides to find a way for the platoon to have some much needed relaxation.

Once in the field, the platoon, under Meserve's direction, kidnaps and rapes a Vietnamese girl who is later killed during a fire fight. Only Eriksson refuses to participate in the rape. The film is shocking enough without knowing that it's based on a true story.

Eriksson is tormented that he was not able to stop the rape or save the girl's life. Returning to base, he agonizes over whether to report the rape and turn in his fellow soldiers or to say nothing. Compounding Eriksson's dilemma is the fact that Meserve had saved his life on an earlier patrol. Turning in Meserve means turning against someone to whom Eriksson literally owes his life.

While on another patrol with a different platoon, Eriksson comes upon a soldier who has been killed by a booby trap set up by the Viet Cong. A soldier in the platoon advises Eriksson to forget it, suggesting that the dead soldier is simply a casualty of a meaningless war.

Eriksson is horrified by the callousness of the soldier and confronts him. Take a look at the scene, but be warned: There is a graphic image of the dead soldier and curse words are used:

Michael J. Fox, in the person of Eriksson, has presented a dilemma that we all face. We aren't in a war. Yet, in reality, we could die at any moment. Because of our inevitable mortality, does it not matter what we do or, as Eriksson laments, "maybe it matters more than we even know?" Actions have consequences. And, sometimes, we don't stop to consider those consequences because it doesn't seem to matter.

This dilemma is made humorous by Woody Allan in his movie, "Annie Hall." The young protagonist, Alvy Singer, has stopped doing his homework:

Like Alvy Singer's mother and doctor, I might suggest that we just get on with our lives and not question whether our actions matter or not. Except for one little thing that keeps gnawing at me: The answer to that question is critically important and not just in time of war. How that question is answered has real consequences for the people in our lives and, sometimes, for thousands of people we will never meet.

Do you think Bernard Madoff, who led a Ponzi scheme that produced losses of billions of dollars, stopped to question the consequences of what he was doing? Did he care how much it mattered to the people he was deceiving? Do you think that those who created complex financial instruments that led to the mortgage debacle paused in their greed to debate the affect their actions would have on millions of home owners? 

On a more personal level, do we wonder if it matters when we blithely throw cigarette butts out our car window or don't pick up after our dog? At the grocery store, do we question if it matters whether our choice is paper instead of plastic? Or plastic instead of paper? When we angrily blow our horn because the car in front of us is going slower than we would like, do we pause to reflect on how it affects the person in that other car? When we gossip about, rather than confront, someone who has offended us, do we stop to consider the consequences on that person's reputation? Does it matter?

As Viktor Frankl writes in "Man's Search For Meaning," “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Do our actions matter more than we can know?  Do we care? We are responsible for the answer to those questions. And the answers matter.

"Minority Report:" Is There Such A Thing As Free Will?

In the Tom Cruise movie, “Minority Report,” Tom plays a “PreCrime” Captain named John Anderton who apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called "precogs". The movie examines whether free will can exist if the future is set and known in advance.

I thought the movie was an interesting fantasy. After all, I believe that we have the power to choose our lives in spite of our circumstances and that we can create any future we choose regardless of our past. I’ll bet you’re a believer too.

I’ve subscribed to the philosophy of Joseph Campbell, the expert on how myths shape our lives, who encouraged us to “follow our bliss” and, in doing so, the world would cooperate in having us fulfill our dreams.

Now I’m not so sure. Welcome to the future.

In his book “Free Will” (which makes a strong case that we don’t have any), Sam Harris cites two experiments. In the first, the physiologist Benjamin Libet used EEG imaging to show that a person’s brain registers a future action we are going to take some 300 milliseconds (enough time for a basketball player to get off a shot before the buzzer) before we actually move.

And a good thing, too. Imagine if we saw the driver of the car in front of us suddenly jam on the brakes and we had to take the time to consciously decide whether to stop or not before hitting our brakes. Our brains save us from accidents almost every time we drive. This explains how we can drive without consciously thinking about driving and still respond to an emergency.

In the second experiment cited by Harris, subjects were asked to press one of two buttons when they saw a letter appear. Now get this: The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button the subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.

The implications of these studies suggest that it’s possible for someone (say a “PreCrime Captain” if there were such a person in real life) to accurately predict our behavior before we behave. How can we claim to have free will when someone can detect what we’re going to do before we know we’re going to do it?

Blows your mind doesn’t it? If we are not acting out of choice (free will), what is giving us our actions? If we don’t have free will, can we hold the murderer responsible for murder, the bully responsible for bullying, the smoker responsible for his “choice” to smoke or the obese person responsible for his/her weight?

In an article by two professors of psychology and neuroscience in the July 27^th, 2012 New York Times (“Did Your Brain Make You Do It?”), the writers ask not only about the implications of these studies to our understanding of whether someone is truly responsible for a crime, but also for ordinary activities like “maintaining exercise regimens, eating sensibly and saving for retirement.”

They conclude by saying “It’s important that we don’t succumb to the allure of neuroscientific explanations and let everyone off the hook” even as neuroscience is suggesting that we have to let everyone off the hook.

But how then to explain the fact that people do lose weight and keep it off, decide to stop smoking and do so or commit to having a loving marriage and maintain that pledge til death do them part?

Good question.

Harris addresses this dilemma but doesn't really answer it. What he does say is that we still can hold others (and ourselves) responsible for their actions, but we must be compassionate when doing so.

As he writes in his book, ”Speaking from personal experience, I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics—by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck.”

So the next time you go off a diet, become angry even though you want to be kind or procrastinate when you know you should "just do it," forgive yourself. You could have made a different choice but you had no free will to do so.

It's a paradox we'll just have to live with for now.

Muhammad Ali Really Is "The Greatest"

You want to know how to handle difficult people? You can do no better than use Muhammad Ali as your role model.

I could draw no other conclusion as I watched the HBO "true to life" show, "Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight" as well as a PBS "Independent Lens" film called "The Trials of Muhammad Ali." The latter is a documentary while the former is a fictionalized version of actual events interspersed with interviews with the real Muhammad Ali and other contemporary figures.

"Muhammed Ali's Greatest Fight" opens in 1967 when Ali has joined the Nation of Islam and has refused induction into the armed forces on the grounds of being a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam. The nation was bitterly divided about that war and Ali became the lightning rod for all sides in the debate.

Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight champion boxing title and didn't fight again for four years while the case wound it's way through the courts and, ultimately, was decided in Ali's favor by the Supreme Court in 1971.

Think about that for a moment. As a matter of conscience, Ali gave up millions of dollars he would have earned in the ring. He had devoted his entire life to one thing: Being the heavyweight champion of the world and he had no way of knowing if he would ever fight again.

Whether Ali is the greatest boxer who ever lived is an ongoing debate. In my mind, what really makes Ali "The Greatest," (as he proclaimed about himself) is his temperament during this time. Not once was he seen exploding in rage. At one point, David Susskind, a well known television producer and talk show host at the time said about Ali as Ali sat there silently listening, "He's a disgrace to his country, his race and what he laughingly describes as his profession...He's a simplistic fool and a pawn." (Susskind also predicted Ali would go to jail proving just how wrong Susskind was on all counts.)   

At the end of "Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight," there is an interview with Ali in which he is asked why he never showed resentment towards those who had stripped him of his title and questioned the veracity of his belief about being a conscientious objector to the war.

Ali's response demonstrates why he is "The Greatest" and we are mere mortals. Ali says, "I'd be a hypocrite if I (showed resentment) because they did what they thought was right...For me to condemn them, when I was also doing what I thought was right, would be hypocritical."

Wow! Talk about getting up off the floor and not coming up swinging. Ali is a role model for those of us who struggle with our desire to lash out when we are attacked, knowing that doing so would only bring an unending series of attacks and counterattacks.

In 2005, Muhammad Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. George W. Bush, when presenting the medal, called Ali "a man of peace."

Well deserved.