Chance | 

 

I wrote this some years ago after watching Being There. At the time, I thought I was exploring perception. Looking back, I also see how I was gently moving away from the truth.

What I didn’t see then, is how easily understanding can become a way to soften what hurts. I wasn’t denying, I was reinterpreting what had happened. 
Clever codependent reflex…

I wasn’t just questioning my story.
I was stepping away from my true experience of it.
Not because I was weak.
But because I was loyal.

Today, I don’t choose between understanding and truth.
I hold both.

 

 

 

Watching a good movie with a friend is a true pleasure. That feeling is enhanced when the film is of such caliber that it stimulates you to think about what you saw. “Being There” is such a film—an oldie, released in 1979. 

An emotionally retarded man was kept inside the home of an elderly gentleman all his life. Contact with the outside world consisted only of gardening and a housekeeper who served him his meals. Everything the man, named Chance, knows of the outside world, he knows through TV. The older gentleman placed as many as 5 of these in the house and even one in the garden. Chance is seemingly conditioned very early on because he does not seem to miss anything in his life and does not yearn for more. 

When the old man dies, Chance is thrown out on the street, for the house must be sold. He packs a suitcase, pulls the front door shut behind him and walks into a completely impoverished slum with vagrants and all. It doesn’t bother him. Neither do the adventures that follow. He behaves as he saw people do on TV and his sentences are often no more than “I understand,” “I want to,” “I like that,” and “Nice to meet you.” He is 100% sincere, often genuinely surprised too and then asks what he wants to know without embarrassment. Whether he is walking in the backwoods, speaking to the president or speaking as a guest on a famous talk show, he remains childishly honest and virtually unemotional. 

For me, the message of the film lies in the phenomenon that everyone Chance comes in contact with gives their own interpretation of Chance’s (few) words and, as a result of that interpretation, ascribes a character to him. Someone sees in him a sincere friend, another an omniscient economic advisor, a third a modest linguistic prodigy, and others see a sly Russian spy, a perfect gentleman and a potential new U.S. president. Is the name Chance a coincidence? Or does Chance offer everyone around him the chance to fantasize about it and create their own story about him? 

Are we doing something different? Or would I rather have myself questioned, am I doing something else? No of course not. I make up all kinds of stories based on my interpretations. In particular, past events determine how I “see” someone’s behavior in the now. Example. My partner and I are in a long-distance relationship. That means sometimes there is some silence in our communication. A while back he told me that he has had a lover for several months (until very recently)–confessing is a better word perhaps–after my intuition moved me to question him.
Nowadays, when my partner does not call or write, I give a very different meaning to his silence. The silence in itself has not changed. Has my partner changed? No, neither has he. He is simply doing whatever he did before: living his life, meeting new people, loving me, loving some others, trying to gain insight into his life questions, wanting me to come to him, crying and laughing, praying, judging and forgiving. 

But for me, his candor has made him different. I changed my story about him. Unreliable, selfish, insensitive, non-empathetic, those words I’ve woven into the story almost immediately. But, is that my husband or is that my story about him? My partner told me that he didn’t say anything because he knew it would hurt me. That it meant absolutely no danger to our relationship. That he had felt judged by me for some time while I absolutely could not understand what he was going through, and that his lover had given him that understanding. Does that perhaps make my partner actually empathetic, sensitive, consistent even? 

Then the question arises: who is my partner? What story am I telling myself? Those words unreliable, selfish, insensitive and non-empathetic have gone through my mind before in relation to his behavior. Every now and then one floats by in the stream of my thoughts. Of course, those words take on a different connotation the more often they pass by. Haven’t I already unconsciously assigned them to him as character traits?

The question on my mind after watching “Being There” is to what extent I create the one who I call my partner. Because as you no doubt know, thoughts “wear in” and our neurons move much more easily along beaten paths. And yes, it’s also just a fact that I more often interpreted and interpret others’ behavior as unreliable, selfish, insensitive and non-empathetic. Does that say something about who the other person is or does that say something about who I am?

Am I naive to think this way? Does it make me vulnerable or powerful? Am I a gullible person, a victim who condones her partner’s behavior or am I an enlightened mind? You may tell. But, as the film emphasized, you most likely did so already, anyway.