The pursuit of happiness plays out in strange ways, and the vice or obsession that seems like the answer leads to bad patterns of living. As readers and watchers we hate didactic stories that feel like moral preaching, but a tale well-told can sneak lessons in like a subtle spice in a dish, where we know we liked the meal but can’t explain why. We can usually sniff out a morality play from a mile away, so we look for the next show to watch or book to read. Aesop’s Fables are so obviously trying to tell us something moral that we tire of them quickly, but we’ll fawn over Moby Dick or Hamlet or Finnegan’s Wake for generations because we can’t easily discern what the heck is going on. We love the hunt. We could find all that we need in Aesop but it’s too simple; the lessons are too obvious and characters too one-dimensional. So here’s a couple of movies that I like where this hunt for meaning and purpose and happiness play out somewhat like the woman with the cursed bananas, as the main characters follow their vice or obsession right to the bitter end.

There’s a dark crime thriller movie called U-Turn starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez, where a cocky hotshot that is addicted to pills becomes stranded in a desert town in Arizona when his car, a convertible, breaks down. The movie did not do well and critics didn’t love it, but the main character’s self obsession and his undying conviction that “he is lucky” make his fall through the acts disturbingly comical. In the end, after being involved in two murders, after being thrown from a cliff, after breaking his leg, after being beaten, and when he is nearly dying of thirst, he claws his way back to his car, in the middle of nowhere under the dead heat of a midday Arizona sun. He is an utter mess and barely alive, but he looks in the rear view mirror and says to himself, “You’re still lucky!” right before he turns the key and a hose bursts in the radiator, rendering his car useless. His luck has finally run out. He will die in the desert, as the scavenger birds gather around his convertible. I have to admit, I laughed out loud, even as this movie careened from comedy into tragedy in that moment, because I think the director, Oliver Stone, meant for it to be funny. And for some reason I connected this darkly humorous scene to St. Paul when he was locked in the prison with his traveling companion, Silas. The two of them had been dragged and beaten with rods in Phillippi, and after all that the two of them were “praying and singing” until midnight. Paul is like the devout version of Sean Penn, saying to himself, “I’m still lucky!” but Paul is talking about being lucky in Christ, lucky to have Christ, whereas Sean Penn is still talking about his luck in his disordered pursuit of money and drugs and sex.

The greatest moment of this movie, is that after the glaringly obvious error of his ways, and his continuous pursuit of drugs, women, and money that has led him into this mutilated mess, he still clings to his fool’s gold, his oak tree, his false idol. He clutches his sins like pearls right to the end only to have it all blow up in his face just like the rubber hose on his radiator. The movie didn’t win any awards. It wasn’t received all that well, but it stuck with me because it illustrates the saying of “where your treasure lies, there will your heart also be.” In the beginning, Sean Penn is driving a slightly beat up convertible car with the top down, which is like a symbol for how he lives his life: loosely in the breeze. He’s just having fun, he’s got neither conviction nor compunction, he’s just letting the wind blow him wherever it takes him. And in the end, this top-down way of living is exactly how he is exposed to the desert birds and vultures that will eat him in that same convertible, as if he’s been put into a desert oven and served open-faced to the brutal reality of nature, red in tooth and claw (and beak). 

Other movies and stories follow this path as well, with two of my favorites being The Wrestler and Black Swan. I feel like these two movies tell a similar story but from very different worlds. Pro wrestling and ballet are rarely compared or even spoken of in the same breath. However, Natalie Portman in Black Swan is obsessed with a rage to master ballet, to be the best, to succeed at all costs. And she does. She becomes perfect, and in doing so dies in the final act having reached her goal, but it cost her everything. She sacrifices her future, the possibility of family and love and friendship, even her innocence. Everything is put at the foot of the altar of her burning passion for mastery of ballet. In The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke has outlasted his glory days but floats about in a wake of disastrous relationships and drug abuse, unable to adjust to regular life. His need for fame and glory in the ring is never put to bed, so unlike the Black Swan, he does not die in his glory, he has to live beyond his moment of greatness. The Black Swan character dies at the height of her success. She has performed the perfect dance and died for it, but her tragedy is sacrificing all for a dance that perhaps only she appreciates (this reminds me of The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, but I’m already spreading out this comparison too far, so maybe in another post). In The Wrestler, there are two tragedies. First, he outlives his success. He has been to the top and held the title belt. He’s basked in adoration of fans and taken the trophy home. But now, that’s all over, and he must live as an ordinary man, as he takes a job at a deli in the grocery store and must serve every regular joe who wants a pound of sliced ham. The earthly glory has been tasted and cannot be removed from his mouth. The need to return to that state of honor lingers, it follows and haunts him daily. In the last scene, the wrestler has joined a local semi-pro wrestling troupe that performs in local gyms. He wants to ride out into the sunset one last time. Unlike his glory days, he is a cartoonish figure of both body and soul, with his muscles pumped full of steroids and supplements, and a face tattling on years of drug and alcohol abuse. The fans cheer and jeer him, recalling his better days but not respecting him any longer as his hour has passed. In one last jump from the top ropes, the wrestler leaps for glory, to hear the cheer one last time, to be noticed and seen and loved. He dies of a heart attack in the air. There is a sense that he is at peace, as he has once again received the glory, he has been the flying acrobat, the show, the centerpiece, the entertainer. He is loved, sort of, by the crowd. But the crowd doesn’t really care about him. It’s not a real love. Those that he should have loved, his daughter and former wives and girlfriends, are all gone from his life. Repeatedly, he has chosen glory and drugs and sex over those closest to him. He has failed to love them, trading real love for the false love of the crowd. Thus the sense of peace in his death is not so much of achievement, but rather a putting to sleep the neverending dream that could not die, the need for the approval and cheer of strangers that never came close to real love at all. The ballerina’s death comes in her prime, and the wrestler’s death in his twilight, but they both suffer the same illusion.

So how does that relate to cursed bananas or dreams of writing fame?

One of the reasons I don’t write fiction any longer is because I gave up the “dream” and realized that fame or glory would never have satisfied any more than getting drunk did. Perhaps there’s an element of sour grapes, too, since I chose not to pursue it fully, and I didn’t get glory, so I put on the fig leaf of “I didn’t want to be a success anyway because it would make me shallow.” That notion I’ve dug into a bit, but in one of those life moments like what I had in the office cubical, I had another one when I read a poem by John Keats. In a little library at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, while all the other combat medics in training were engaged in less nerdy things, I spent my free hour or two reading. After dismissal, I would rush off to the library and pull a book from the shelf of the classical literature section. One day I read his poem called “On Fame.” I remember it feeling like I was reading instructions from an experienced artist to forget about fame, to give it up. The poem reads:

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy

To those who woo her with too slavish knees,

But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,

And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;

She is a Gipsey,--will not speak to those

Who have not learnt to be content without her;

Keats, who gained fame in his short life, was saying that to pursue fame almost guarantees that the pursuer won’t get it. He’s talking about motives and desires. If the desire is for fame, then the pursuit is all wrong. So I knew when I read these lines, that if I did not write for the love of writing, then it was like a business pursuit or cheap trick for the love of strangers. I knew I loved literature and writing, but there was never enough. I always wanted more books and more time to write. I was chasing a goal, like the characters in Black Swan and The Wrestler. The “rage to master” something comes to most of us in some form, where we want to be great at science, or programming, or gaming, or a sport, or cooking. But the motive underneath that rage must be examined, because the root of the rage may not be joy but a kind of anger or even hate. Keats tells us to kiss fame goodbye before you even start, because if you don’t, that butterfly will never land on you. He compares fame to a goddess that chooses some “thoughtless boy” who has a heart at ease. So say goodbye, and if she likes you, she will follow you.

Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!

Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,

Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

Whatever our “treasure” is we must be able to live without it. We also must make sure that it’s not the main treasure, otherwise we may learn the hard way that the treasure is actually a mirage. Is the desire to publish a novel or succeed in business or get 10,000 followers or win the state title actually driven by joy and passion? Or…is it one of the seven deadlies causing all the trouble underneath? It comes down to the question: are you worshipping an oak tree, or God? Are you panning for fool’s gold, or seeking eternal life? Is your daily ritual and life being sacrificed for fame, glory, wealth and honor, or do you offer all of those up in exchange for humility like Christ did on the cross? This is not an easy topic to dig into, and there are layers to unearth.

I believe that God’s will may be made revealed slowly to us. He knows the ending, but we don’t. There are crossroads in this life where free will makes it difficult, and choosing which direction to take is difficult. Eventually, we must make decisions, as sometimes I want God to shine a light on the path forward, and there are times it almost seems like he has done that. But to expect to hear God’s voice for decisions is not how it works, and we must choose a way. I think I made many of the “wrong” choices, because I knew when things were wrong. My conscience ate at me when I chose those errant paths. Jesus says to enter by the narrow gate. He didn’t say it’s located in the alley behind the bar. Wide is the path that leads to destruction, he says, but to follow him we must take up our cross daily. But that sounds hard, doesn’t it? Isn’t that hard? You would think so. But it’s not once you begin. Recall the simple phrase: Surrender to win. The gentle mastery of Christ in life is what Keats was talking about, and it’s what the young woman with the bananas needed. It’s what Sean Penn needed in U-Turn (maybe in real life as well). This is what ballerina needed and what the wrestler needed in those films. It’s what the hunter is hunting for and the seeker is seeking after. What are they all trying to find?

They are seeking something that is good, true, and beautiful. The best stories are of restless souls seeking redemption through strange sacrifices and pursuits. This is a story as old as time, literally, as what else is happening in the Garden of Eden? It is the story of lost innocence and the subsequent pursuit of what the belly and mind want. The “journey” we talk about today, the journey that we are all on: that journey is the root idea of the Fall in the Garden, where people journey away from God, rejecting his rules, in pursuit of knowledge and finding that sin leads to death. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of someone who was once innocent getting lost and trying to find their way back to God. It’s so simple it’s absurd. What drives me nuts about Genesis is that taken literally it’s every bit as good as allegorically. Honestly, one of the reasons I don’t write stories any longer happened when I realized that the greatest stories had already been written, and everything else was a re-hashing. As the saying goes, “All philosophy is footnotes to Plato.” I would echo that and say that all literature is footnotes to the Bible, and I would add the Greeks in there too. All modern stories are retelling of old stories, and the idea that the ancients were ignorant betrays our own arrogance. What we reveal in discounting old stories is the revelation of our own biases and worldviews. My bananas story is like the Garden of Eden story, and also the same story of Narcissus. Trapped by passion for his youth, Narcissus stares into the water until he dies, still gazing at his reflection in the river Styx as he makes that boat ride into the underworld. Both of these stories say much more than my Bananas, or U-Turn, or The Wrestler, or The Black Swan, and in far fewer words, with much greater meaning and application to my daily life.

But the happy ending for all of these seekers is simple. The rest they are looking for is not in holding a published novel, or wearing a championship belt, or having unblemished skin, or hearing a round of applause, or taking a trophy deer, or winning a state title. The restlessness has a solution. It’s available. It’s free. It’s here now. It can be delivered today, to anywhere. And it goes like this:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt 11:27)

What Jesus is trying to tell us is that the fountain of youth is available, but it’s through him. The pool is open. I think the old language of the “the kingdom of God is within you” can be confusing, for a few reasons, one being that the word kingdom is dated to a different time than ours of American democracy. The word itself - “kingdom” - feels strange. A better translation is probably “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” Jesus is always talking about water, and the Fountain of Youth is a magical water that restores, like the waters of Bethesda where the crippled and lepers attempted to receive miraculous healing. But it’s simpler than that. Einstein and other scientists have expressed a kind of surprise at how the simple formulas can describe the cosmos, and yet allude to greater complexity than we can fathom. When Jesus is talking about himself being the “living water” he is literally telling us that he is the fountain of youth, that he is the place of renewal. When he says, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” he is saying we must drink from his living water, from his life. The water is always a metaphor for belief in him. We baptize one another in water to help us get the point, that the living water is Jesus. We put holy water on our heads and fingertips to remind us that God is the way to health and renewal. He turns water into wine. He walks on water. He calms the water. He saved the sinking Peter from the water. There’s just so much going on with water that you have to realize that these similes and metaphors are alternative ways for Jesus to say, “To be saved, you must be baptized and believe.” What’s interesting here is that he says it flat out with no metaphor. But it’s like that’s not enough. We’re too picky to just hear the words: “Be baptized and believe” and take it at face value. But if we don’t like that one, he says the same thing to Nicodemus: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” For some reason, we need more. The literal version fails, so we need a metaphor, a story. Then we get the metaphor and the story and we start checking for malleability so we can shape it into what we want to hear.

Must we choose to be beaten over the head? How many stories, Biblical or otherwise, tell this same tale? We want something deeper, because we must keep eating from the tree of knowledge. The fruit of that tree never fills our bellies, or not for long. We are intellectual gluttons, such that if the simple answer is given, we reject it for it’s simplicity because we are not yet like God, just as the snake promised Eve. The reason it is called the tree of knowledge is because we hunger and thirst for knowledge far more than we hunger and thirst for the righteousness that Jesus’ mentions in the beatitudes. Google has accelerated this gluttony for knowledge into the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet at an all-inclusive resort in Cancun with an all-night open bar.

I share the same malady as The Hungry Little Caterpillar, which is gluttony, for both food and knowledge. The caterpillar’s gluttonous consumption transforms him into a beautiful butterfly, as that is how his life is intended to unfold, but my hunger for knowledge leads to intellectual gluttony and spiritual diabetes. The caterpillar eats everything until it’s stomach hurts, but this gluttony is toward the right goal of becoming a butterfly. My gluttony for knowledge leads to isolation behind a stack of books, to the point that I start to study the Bible instead of just read the Bible. I heard a comment somewhere that made the point: “Many of us would rather attend a seminar about heaven than actually go to heaven.” This is true because like the fountain of youth, the pursuit of knowledge is unending and can never be complete. To gain all knowledge is to become like God, which is precisely the problem just like wanting to remain young forever.

Knowing that many of hunger for knowledge, Jesus throws us a lifeline, offering us both the straight-shooting literal version of his message and a bonus metaphorical version. He does this multiple times, in multiple ways, and still…somehow…still we struggle to receive the transmission. How can it be so hard? Is this why he calls us a “stiff-necked people”? What a great insult. I had a stiff neck from a pinched nerve recently and had to turn my whole body to look at people, which made me think of this idiom, which I learned came from oxen that refused to turn when lashed or poked by the farmer.

Yes, we are stubborn. No argument there. A second line that I always smile at when reading the Gospel is when Jesus says, “Let the person who has ears listen!” I’m sorry, but there’s an element of humor to it because I think of a public school teacher who is trying day after day to deliver lessons, but has twenty out of thirty kids screwing around and ignoring him. When the test day comes, the kids who weren’t listening complain, “But you never went over this stuff! We’ve never heard of this material! It’s not fair.”

Apparently we have stiff necks and no ears. Why are we diagnosed as stiff-necked and earless by Jesus? It means we are prideful, rebellious, and stubborn. We’re jumping around in the back of the classroom ignoring the teacher and expecting the test to be open book, or that if we fail we get a second or third chance to re-take the test. While the teacher instructs, we’re having spit-wad wars and showing off. We’re passing notes and checking our phones. In short, we want a different kind of wisdom than what he offers because we want to make a name for ourselves, to be seen, to win, to be approved. The snake suggested this idea in the garden to Adam and Eve so that we cannot hear the truth, so that we cannot be simple and exposed, we cannot be naked before God. The simple answer doesn’t satisfy us, because the suggestion that we can “be like God” still lingers in our ears that listen to what they want to hear. We choose not to believe that what is ultimately good, true, and beautiful could be so simple, because the enticement of something secret and deliciously complex seems more exciting and inviting.

Even as Jesus tells us that the children understand “the kingdom” better than adults can, we scheme and plan our way to outdo each other. Paul states it quite plainly: “Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?” Indeed he has, and that lesson is hard to learn, as it seems the best students learn this lesson early and the rest of us take the wide path to destruction, and many of us never learn at all. Unless you return like a child to faith, you can never have it, and for those of us that cannot bear something literal, here’s the related metaphor that Jesus offers: “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”

A grain of wheat doesn’t form until the plant reaches maturity. It is “wheatless” until adulthood. So the grain of wheat, in its youth, grows, but the intended purpose of the plant is to grow and make more wheat. The point of the plant isn’t to just live forever, or outlast the plants around it, or use up as many resources as it can to be the largest wheat plant. The point of the plant is to reach maturity, and then return to the earth - to give itself back, to produce more wheat. In other words, to become like a child again. The wheat plant started from a seed of wheat. It must return to become a seed of wheat, like a child. The adult must become like a child again to be complete. The child must grow, mature, but must become like a child once again. It’s so simple but so complex, like Einstein’s formulas.

“Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” So do you want the fountain of youth, or eternal life? (Trick question: the fountain of youth is available, if you stop looking in the wrong places, and stop thinking it’s all about you.)

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