Fight for your mind

Last night, I watched Fight Club. For a moment, it seemed that my lifelong quest would be completed, and finally I would understand who I was. Brad Pitt swaggered in front of the camera, and promised that he knew the way to self-discovery. “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? Our great war is a spiritual one, and our great depression is our lives.”

And I watched as regular guys beat the tar out of each other in a search for meaning, and in the movie, they found it. A wide eyed, breathless media reported on the emergence fight clubs here in the real world – guys began punching each other in the face to achieve a rough enlightenment. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but we will do anything, no matter how stupid, if the promise at the other end is an explanation, a purpose. We will listen to any sort of foolishness if someone will tell us who we are, take the keys to the great filing cabinet upstairs and show us our permanent record, the file that makes everything clear. “Ah, Jonas, you are a very interesting case...” the great record-keeper will say. “I will let you see this. All you have to do is punch someone else in the face. No, I changed my mind. All you need is a girlfriend. Oh, sorry, no, I will tell you who you are if you go to church every Sunday…”

Dr. Phil or Dr. Freud, we will listen to anyone. Journals to fight clubs, we will do anything. And our great fear is not that it will hurt. Our great fear is that there is nothing to discover, no fact of the matter; that at the end of all our therapy sessions and boxing matches we still will not know ourselves. What if it turns out that this random thing is all there is? What if there is no permanent record, no string that ties together all the events that seemed meaningless, no hour long show that sums it up?

Sorry, I have no answers for you.