A SHORT STORY FOR OUR TIMES
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 29, 2011
“It is the fact that man does not experience himself as the active bearer of his own powers and richness, but as an impoverished thing, dependent on powers outside of himself, unto whom he has projected his living substance.”
Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980), German-American Jewish social psychologist and philosopher
* * *
I
Imagine you are in a state of anxiety. You don’t know whether you’re coming or going so many mixed signals bombard your senses. Life is a burden a mounting chore. This you keep largely to yourself, only you know the depths of your misery, your pent-up rage, the anger and frustration storming your mind. Amazingly, you manage to fumble through your daily activity with hardly a conscious thought. Then one day everything changes.
It is lunchtime. You wander into the city park. The air is refreshing. The sky is soothing with its gentle clouds. Your attention is drawn to a middle aged man, poorly dressed in rumpled clothes, unkempt hair and stringy beard sitting on a bench. In contrast, his countenance suggests a contented man. He pats his bench beckoning you to join him. You oblige.
“Are you as happy as you look?” you ask boldly.
He smiles. “My happiness, it surprises you?” He turns his full attention to you. Shocked, you see he is not old, but his deep lines suggest a well-traveled face.
“You are as content as you seem?” you insist.
“Yes,” he replies simply as he hurls a hand full of popcorn to the squirrels at his feet, “why should I not be?” His eyes are laughing as if enjoying a private joke at your expense. Your face reddens.
“I am a world authority on happiness,” he continues ignoring my discomfiture, breaking into a wide grin, “from my limited view of the world from my bench.”
You get a sick feeling that sitting with him was a mistake the guy is a crackpot! You attempt to get up.
“The most important thing in life is perspective.” He squints at the sun, rubs his eyes. “Yes, perspective is everything.” He rubs his hands together as if making a snowball of air then opens his palms up to present his gift. “I present this my frame of reference.” You look at his empty hands and shake your head in dismay. Untroubled, he continues, “Without such a frame of reference, perspective is impossible.” He slaps his hands together again to remove the imaginary residue of his snowball of air, then scratches his chin, pulling at his stringy whiskers, looks coyly at you out of the corner of his eye reminding you of a Leprechaun.
“Most people only know the frame of the cage.” You winch at his words. Your stomach churns. You break into a sweat, turn away, search for your handkerchief. Caged is how you feel, caged to a job, home, family and friends, to everything. You are not in control. You wonder if he senses this. If so, how? You wonder if your guard is down.
“A cage?” you ask, “like a cage in the zoo?”
“Is there any other kind?” He senses your confusion, touches your arm gently, which startles you, sending an electric shock through your system, but his hand is as warm as his words. Paralyzed, you don’t move. He looks to the sky again, directly into the sun, stretching his arms heavenward, then drops them abruptly, bows his head, and says, “The moment you are born you are old enough to die. Can you appreciate what freedom that implies?” He raises his eyes to yours. “Do you sense the power in that knowledge?” All you feel is confused, and a little afraid, but he goes on.
“Life and death are soul mates, racing to embrace each other from the moment of conception.” He pauses, pours more popcorn into his hands, “I fear,” he says solemnly, “death dominates most people’s lives who are always getting ready to live.” He throws his popcorn to the squirrels, now joined by pigeons, “Only to run out of time.” His voice trails off, “You cannot live until you understand life is all about death, death is the beginning of life not its end. Everything is dying, as it is growing, living. Dying is what life is about, so why the fear of it?” You shrug your shoulders incomprehensibly. You hate rhetorical discussions yet still fail to move.
“Accepting death removes the possibility of anxiety just as certainly as dry ice moves from a solid to a gas skipping the anxious liquid stage where anxiety resides. The self is freed of the need for disguise.” He chuckles, “Pretense is such a waste but fortunately biodegradable.” He grabs your shoulders with his huge hands and shakes you gently, his strength surprises you, but you do nothing.
“Imagine not having to make believe!” He studies you. “We start out as a real person not pretending to feel, value, believe or care for what we don’t. We start out as an authentic human being, a real person, and then we start collecting masks.” He laughs so hard he nearly falls off the bench. “We have more masks than clothes in our wardrobe.”
You cautiously slide to the other end of the bench, which he fails to sense. “Notice how anxious we are about little things, losing our watch, and calm about big things, losing our house in a tornado.” He pauses. “When we lose everything, anxiety evaporates like dry ice, showing our best face, our real face, a face we abandoned a long time ago.” He shakes his head. “Alas, there are not enough tornadoes.”
You know this is madness, but your spine tingles, and you don’t want to break the spell.
“With tornadoes, our essence surfaces. We are ready to embrace life, ready to be happy.”
The idea of happiness trickles down your spine like melting ice. You wonder if you have ever known happiness. Your intuitive sensors break your spell. “If I understand you correctly,” you blurt out in panic, “you imply tragedy produces happiness, right?” Avoiding his eyes, you add, “Being obsessed with death, dying and tragedy seems absurd.” Your words surprise you. The stranger only smiles.
“Oh, my friend, I disagree. Being aware of death is not an obsession, as obsession has no perspective, no frame of reference. He shakes his head. “Mortality is a given, everything reverts back to its primal state of nature. That is reality. Denial is catalyst to demise. I am simply suggesting that we embrace death when it is all around us, like in a tornado, and give ourselves permission to truly be alive, to be authentic human beings. We are then ready to live, to see our common humanity and vulnerability to nature and circumstance. If you would but allow me,” he takes your hand and studies your palm like a gypsy. “Thank God there is death for how should we know of life otherwise?” Still holding your palm, he says, “I might go on being someone else, someone false. With death possible at any moment, I am ready to abandon a banal existence and an impossible cage. I have no need to escape freedom because I am now free.”
Releasing your hand, he looks deeply into your eyes. You self-consciously rub your sweaty palms against your shirt. His gaze is steady open, somehow comforting. Abruptly, he stretches his arms skyward. “I am ready to be happy, ready to embrace my resistance to freedom, ready to take control because I am no longer intimidated by chaos.” He pauses allowing his words to sink in, then takes your hands again. “I am ready to open the gates of my cage, and walk into paradise.” He pats his bench to the echo of children playing, busy people bustling by, the cacophony of city traffic, birds in the trees chirping, the coloratura of perfect pitch blending with the aroma of life.
II
Coquettishly, he asks his eyes steel-gray ball bearings of shinny intensity, “May I tell you a story?” You look at your watch. It is long past due time for you back at the office. “It might help to explain what I mean.” You shrug your shoulders.
“The cage is the home of anxiety. Anxiety chases you into the cage. Understanding this may help to avoid the cage, and make possible an authentic life. Anxiety, you see, is more fundamental to behavior than fear.” Your face takes on an expression of boredom. He smiles knowingly.
“Yes, hard as that is to believe it is nevertheless true. Fear, you see, is specific, like a tornado. Anxiety is not. It is free floating wondering anxiously when a tornado is to hit your home even if the possibility is rare. Anxiety belongs to and is perpetuated by the insatiable capacity for its reporting by media.
“Anxiety is the silence beyond language, nameless, beyond conscious experience but vicariously witnessed through word and visual pictures. It is the orchestrated pauses of the minister or priest or rabbi, suggesting doom is upon us if we don’t mend our ways. The core of life, the unwritten part, is where anxiety dwells. To accept life as a mystery, and to arrive at life’s end unfinished, keeps the gates of the cage open.
“Pundits and soothsayers, columnist and commentators, politicians and power brokers package anxiety into neat bundles of apprehension to keep us in our cages. They provide us with toys of distraction like pacifiers given to us as babies to rid us of our compulsion to bolt our cages.
“Our cages are constructed of our fascination with fear, and our capacity for unhappiness in self-captivity as if it were a shroud. The key riddle of life is that you are happy but have not allowed yourself to know it. You choose the cage voluntarily claiming misery is the umbrella of happiness, as anxiety reduced to fear is misery.”
You are getting impatient, the lunch crowd is gone, the ice cream, pretzel and hot dog vendors have long ago departed, and you have missed a corporate meeting. Rumor has it everyone’s job is on the chopping block. You say simply, “Please, tell me your story!”
III
He smiles. “An acquaintance of mine is a man of ideas. His ideas in his company were said to be seditious. His freethinking spirit intimidated people, so they made him redundant. It didn’t matter that some of his ideas proved useful. Others were quick to take credit, which failed to alarm him. He took pleasure in seeing his ideas put to work.
“But before he was dismissed, the vice president of human resources said, ‘what happens if our competition gets a hold of him?’ The senior management team sitting around the table in mahogany row looked at each other, the CEO asking, ‘Could that hurt us?’ The VP of HR said, ‘Oh, yes!’ Then the CEO declared, ‘If that is true, why get rid of him?’ It was soon made apparent that he was a pariah to the corporate sphere of influence.
So, instead of accepting his resignation or redundancy status, the corporate fathers invited him to a posh villa by the sea, ostensibly to sort out his thoughts and decide on his future. My friend is moved by this humanity. Being treated as special is a new experience, and one relished for its novelty. The villa belongs to a wealthy stockholder, who has expressed sympathy for my friend’s ideas. You might think my friend at last had found true happiness. Not so.
“At the beginning of his stay, he would sit by the pool and sip ice tea enjoying the view. Every morning his host would come by and slap him on the back, and say, ‘My good man, how does it feel to be so free?’ Before my friend could reply, he would continue, ‘anything you want that is mine is yours for the asking, anything!’
“This ritual was repeated for several months without variance. Eventually, as you might suspect, my friend grew restless, bored with his ice tea and the remarkable vista. He had nothing to do. He started getting up later and later, until sometimes he stayed in bed until mid afternoon.
“His host didn’t seem to mind. He was a perfect host. With my friend no longer at the pool, the host would stop by his cottage, always repeating the same refrain. ‘My good man, how does it feel to be so free?’ To this he now added, ‘Do whatever you like, go wherever you prefer.’
‘Am I free unconditionally,’ my friend asked one day, ‘can I do absolutely anything I want to do, is that possible?’
‘Absolutely,’ bellowed the host, walking away slapping his sides, roaring with laughter. Absolutely stung the air like a dying echo.
“This got my friend out of bed in the morning once again. A suspicious man by nature, even an anxious one, a man of rare intelligence who was certain there had to be a catch somewhere. He turned his cottage inside out looking for electronic bugs, video cameras, sensor screens, trip lasers. He found nothing. He booby trapped his briefcase, and painted the pages of his notebooks with his precious ideas with incandescent ink. Nothing was disturbed.
“Most would have left it at that, not my friend. He carried his research into the garden, which surrounded his cottage. It was situated on the point of a triangular shaped lawn-garden landscaped to perfection, and spreading out like glorious wings to the sea beyond, and located a quarter mile from the main house. This house rested on a majestic promontory constructed of moon-baked marble reminiscent of a much earlier time.
“My friend combed every inch of his property, which took him the better part of a month, convinced that he would discover tripwires, alarms systems or surveillance equipment. Again, he found nothing. He uprooted priceless exotic plants, stunted trees, blossoming shrubs, sea beaten rock gardens, mossy grass, and, of course, disturbing the ubiquitous insect population, especially the red ants that tattooed his ankles, hands and wrists with their painful bites. It was a free country.
“One morning, now more than a year later, he strolled into the garden keeping an eye out for the unusual, when his host joined him.
‘Well, my good man, are you satisfied with your investigation?’ he said cheerfully, ‘is everything apparent to your satisfaction?’
“It was obvious the host wasn’t disturbed at the state of the garden, which now appeared as if invaded by an army of groundhogs. The beauty, symmetry and geometry were gone, now replaced by my friend’s brutal anxiety.
‘Quite,” my friend said flatly seeming equally unperturbed with the ambient chaos.
“But the sound of my friend’s voice betrayed his words. He thought himself far cleverer than his host. So, he attempted to conceal his anxiety by baiting his benefactor.
“He snickered, and said, ‘The air is so refreshing.’ As he said this, he cupped his hands together and scooped the air, presenting this as a gift to his host. ‘How would you describe the air’s texture?’ he asked, ‘from an empirical point of view.’ his eyes full of derisive challenge.
‘Why my good man,’ his host shrugged noncommittally, ‘whatever way you prefer it to be. You define its texture and that it shall be. You may define everything as you like.’
‘No!’ my friend replied angrily. ‘That is not possible, and you know it,’ his eyes combative with confusion. ‘What if what I define as true is not? What if it can be disputed? What then? Who is the arbiter? Who is the ultimate definer of things?’ My friend’s voice choked with emotions.
“The host hands on his hips looked up to my friend, and said, ‘There is no need for an arbiter, now is there?’
‘What of the corporation, the government, the state, the church, what if I am out of step with society? What then?' My friend tried to think of all his connections that had been suspended.
‘Perish the thought, my good man,’ the host said, lighting a huge cigar, and blowing smoke rings over my friend’s head, enveloping him in an absurd beatific halo, ‘you are outside such jurisdiction. You are free!’
“My friend listened to these words and watched his host puff away cheerfully in puzzled silence. He wondered what was real, what was the meaning of life without precise language to answer such questions? A loud ‘snip' broke this reverie as his host reached down and deftly clipped a rose at its stem with his cigar clipper, and placed it in his lapel.
‘What of God?’ my friend asked finally. His host turned with a start, studied my friend for a moment, slapped his thigh, and then erupted into laughter in a mounting roar, nearly choking on his cigar. So infectious was this eruption that my friend collapsed into a paroxysm of laughter himself. He thought his host such a good-natured man.
‘That was a good one,’ his host confessed, wiping his tearing eyes with a large silk handkerchief. Suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore. The host could read this change in my friend’s eyes, the bewilderment, the rage, the anger, the betrayal.
‘Meaning no offense, my good man, this is not an easy spot in which to be free. That’s what I’ve wanted to say. It never ceases to amaze me how much cultural baggage you brilliant people carry into a place like this. I’ve come to believe the more you live by your intellect the more you perish by it, and the les you seem to understand.
‘You deep thinkers astound me. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was reflecting on your obsession with complexity when life is such a simple predictable process. We live, we die, and we have a couple of laughs along the way. That is it.
‘You were brought here because you suffer for your ideas. As just reward, you were given a place of peace and freedom to think to your heart’s content without interruption or preemptive challenge.’
“At that, my friend’s host put on his broad brim hat as the sun was now directly overhead, and smiled expansively. ‘I understand your concerns perfectly. Perhaps you should try somewhere else.’ He patted my friend on the shoulder with avuncular affection. Then without a word, he left to tour his estate.
“Business matters were to take the host away from his estate for several weeks. Before he left, a note was left: ‘my good man, please relax. You’re free. Do whatever you like. Go wherever you prefer to go.’
“This expression of kindness far from pacifying my friend angered him into a state of wild frenzy. He tore the note into little pieces, and flushed it down the toilet, then tossed the furniture of his cottage out into the lawn, while breaking lamps, mirrors, vases and dishware.
“His rage sated, he started to take long walks across the estate which extended for miles along the coastline. The open countryside was alive with wild flowers of every hue, shrubs and exotic plants were in bloom, the air redolent with nature naturing. The farther he departed from the sea the less he liked it. Instead of finding tranquility, he found the sheer magnificence of everything stultifying.
“His walks grew shorter and shorter. He would parade around the main house for hours on end, in the host’s absence, as if on patrol. Finally, exhausted in this enterprise, he started to putter in the garden adjoining his cottage. He measured his movements, as he was a precise as well as cautious man.
“Even this garden proved to be too sweeping an project. So, he restricted himself to the long shadows of the checkered lawn at the base of his cottage, which had been restored by groundskeepers.
“Still not satisfied, he venture into a small hollow, ringed by trees situated beyond the garden, out of sight of his cottage and just on the horizon of the main house. There he discovered a patch of turf, precisely in the middle of the ring, perfectly level, smooth as ironed velvet.
‘Eureka!’ he declared, ‘this is just the spot for me.’ It was about one hundred square feet, or ten by ten, or a little bigger than a solitary prison cell.
“Then one day his host found him here in a state of restless ecstasy. He was so busy walking up and down, counting and measuring, hammering stakes into the ground to mark the boundaries of the plot that he failed to notice the arrival of his host. The host stood quietly under a tree nodding and smiling in a knowing way. ‘Well,’ he called out at last, ‘what do we have here?’
“My friend looked sheepishly up, ‘I’m staking out a claim to this property. I hope you don’t mind.’
“The host raised his hands above his head in an expression of mocked exasperation. ‘My good man, why do you ask? All this is yours, as far as the eye can see in any direction belongs as much to you as it does to me. It is there for the asking. I thought I made that clear.’ He gestured to the land, sea, and sky. ‘You are free to make claim to any and all of this.’
‘Thank you for your generosity,’ said my friend, ‘but I don’t want all that. I want only this place and space here. ‘Look! I’ve been measuring it out. Do you think this is a place? Does it have the feel of a place?’ As he spoke, he again danced merrily between the stakes celebrating his claim.
“Sensing the anguish in my friend’s voice, the host dutifully paced off the claimed turf, noting that it measured only eight by eight feet, or 64 square feet, smaller than the space between the trees.
‘Of course, it is a place,’ the host said, ‘it is your place.’
‘These limits,’ my friend reasoned, ‘give me a sense of scope, ‘they provide boundaries in which I can function.’
‘Yes,’ the host agreed, ‘I can see what you mean,’ then reassuringly added, ‘it is a good place.’
“This support exhilarated my friend so much that he put his arm through that of his host and walked with him back to the main house, but now as partners. Full of himself, and in the most expansive mood since coming to this place, he found he couldn’t quit jabbering on and on. Then suddenly, he stopped. He withdrew his arm from his host, frozen to the spot. A huge black truck was sitting in the driveway, the largest flat bed truck he had ever seen.
‘What’s on that truck?’ he asked chokingly, finding it difficult to speak, his body cold with apprehension, rigid with foreboding.
‘Equipment,’ his host offered simply, ‘only equipment.’ Then beckoning my friend with some urgency said, ‘Come! Let us have a drink in celebration!’ Timidly, my friend demurred, glad to avoid further discussion of the truck.
“The next morning my friend went with his host to the patch of turf among the trees to find a large object standing there covered by a black tarpaulin. The host uncovered a gleaming steel monstrosity that glistened in the morning sunlight. My friend looked at it in astonishment, never having seen such an object. He walked around it struggling to purchase comprehension. There was no mistaking what it was. ‘It’s a cage,’ he said finally.
‘It come be seen as such,’ the host agreed.
“As these words registered, my friend could not resist entering the gleaming structure pacing out its measurements. It was eight feet long, seven feet wide, and ten feet high for a total of five hundred and sixty cubic feet of glistening steel bars and encapsulated space. It had a commode, lavatory, bed, table, chair, reading lamp, a sky light, no windows and one door. My friend smiled grudgingly. ‘I must admit it is a nice fit, comfortable, safe, too.’ He walked around it. ‘I feel secure here.’
“At that moment, the host left, leaving my friend to study his enchantment. He spent the day in the little hollow examining his place and space much as one sees animals pacing back and forth within their habitation in a zoo. The host returned at sundown.
‘Well?’ he asked, ‘what do you think?’
‘I suppose in a way,’ my friend reflected submissively his voice traveling off into a whisper. He was tired, tired of fighting for his ideas, tired of pushing facts in the face of their limits, tired of the hassle that comes from combating convention, tired of being tired. He was beyond the world of banality having succumbed to baffling transcendence.
‘This is the only way, my good man,’ the host said reading my friend’s expression. ‘This is a device of class simplicity with the implications of freedom without freedom’s regrets. Here before you is the quintessence of clarity and resolution where you need never be challenged again.
‘Ideals are in decline, morality in disarray, as chaos rules. It is a messy world where thinking men are nearly extinct, a breed apart continuing to fall on their swords. To retard this irrecoverable slippage, we must preserve thinking man before he becomes extinct. Humanity has caused us to resort to this drastic measure.
‘Uncompromising purists like yourself have been happy to accept such accommodations. Now that you have examined this place at your leisure, what is your persuasion? Do you find it suitable to your needs?’
“Before my friend could answer, the host continued. ‘You will never want for anything, writing materials, books, and the best of cuisine. No pain, discomfort, embarrassment, failure, no need to hedge, lie, cheat, steel, bear false witness, covet another man’s property, ideas or persons, no need to suffer fools, no need to worry or be anxious, you are totally outside harm’s way, within the bosom of your convictions where there is no past or any need of a future because there is no self that requires such protection.’
‘It seems substantial enough,’ my friend said more to himself as he was paying little attention to the bewildering words of his host.
‘Do you sense any deficiencies?’ the host replied jumping on this observation.
‘No, admirable, it is quite admirable, really, everything, perfect,’ my friend declared pirouetting in mock ballet. ‘This is what I’ve always wanted.’
“The host took a key out of his pocket. ‘Before I lock you in, it is my duty to warn you.’ My friend waved his arms and clenched his fists ‘stop!’ He shook his fist menacingly at his host, ‘I want to hear no more of your dribble. Be off with you, let me be!’ His host backed off, then my friend said more gently, ‘Please, please no more lectures.’
‘No, I insist,’ asserted the host, ‘you must understand the conditions.’ Then with a genial smile added, ‘everything must be according to Hoyle. We want only for your happiness. That is my charge and our duty. You must understand once you enter this facility of your own volition under no circumstances can you be allowed to exit again. This cannot be emphasized too strongly. My responsibility is to provide you with all the amenities of life until death do we part. My good man do you understand?’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ my friend said impatiently, ‘so get on with it, please.’
“The host was not yet through. ‘Please bear with me,’ his body erect in a military stance, his back straight, ‘however terrible your regret however desperate your sorrow, once you have entered this place you will remain here for the rest of your days. Is that absolutely clear?’ Before my friend could respond, the host continued, ‘You are protected from the infections of social discourse and menacing contradictions, a blessing that might one day have the ring of a curse. Do you understand?’
“My friend stood in the middle of his place, arms folded across his chest, looking defiantly at his host. ‘Will you please get on with it and leave me alone, please!’
“The host unceremoniously locked the facility and walked back to his house without another word.
“It all happened as the host had predicted it would. As he had seen many times before, of an evening as he sat on the veranda of his terrace overlooking the tranquil sea, caressed by a gentle breeze, sipping a cocktail, he would hear the rising wail of my friend, the moaning throbs of his sorrows over the crushing sound of the surf, the same words and snatches of phrases night after night, like ghosts veiled in the mist from cries of another world and time, and this is how my friend spent his final days.”
IV
You look anxiously at the stranger. “He never got out?” He nods his head. “Surely, he attempted to escape,” pleading in his voice.
“No,’ the stranger answers dispassionately, “Why should he? If he had been able to escape, he would no longer be free. He needed the cage, you see, to protect his delicate psyche and magnificent intellect from the toxicity of reality, his ideas from contemptuous rejection, his cultural baggage from disturbance. My friend needed a world of no disconfirming evidence, a world free of anxiety, a world without contours. He ran from his anxieties into the waiting arms of his fears, which now held him permanently at bay. He could not face the blank wall we all must face and scribble his own countenance on it.”
You rub your chin not knowing how to take the stranger’s story. His friend exchanged one misery for another. If so, wasn’t he always in a cage? Is that true of me as well? The clock struck three o’clock. Your afternoon is shot. This is greeted with a disturbing chill, I wonder if I still have a job?
“Excuse me, sir, I am overdo to return to my cage,” you say with forced humor, “my cage masters are surely perplexed at my absence.”
The stranger does not smile. “We view everything from some kind of cage. The real business of life is to recognize who put us there.” His face is now the epitome of pain. “We are in the dark dawn of a new enlightenment where we seem to have little awareness of how we got here. Myth has become science and science has become myth.” He lifts himself from his bench breathing heavily as if carrying an impossible weight. Then he wanders away a piece, stops, looks back, “another cage, mm?” Then he disappears as if a phantom.
* * *