— “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 86)
Alejandro Jodorowsky did not get the chance to make Dune. Nevertheless, he may have given us even more. The documentary film on his doomed Dune project opens with two profound insights. The first is a quote attributed to Psychotherapist Viktor Frankl: “What is to give light must endure burning.” Frankl here (in his introduction to The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy. London : Souvenir Press, 2012) cites the last line in Anton Wildgans’ poem “Helldunkle Stunde” (Bright-Dark Hour): “Was leuchten soll, muß dulden, daß es brennt” (1932). Frankl’s discussion of the quote cannot be thought of without thinking of his identity as a survivor of the Holocaust, and his philosophy centered on what he calls Man’s Search for Meaning. Life, if it wants to shine, must endure failure, must endure suffering, must endure catastrophe — even the ultimate test of meaning.
Jodorowsky then opens the film with a simple but burning question, and an even more enlightening answer: “What is the goal of the life? It’s to create yourself a soul” (Jodorowsky’s Dune). Into this, he has put his life’s philosophy, clearly building on Frankl: Saying yes to life, in spite of everything. We already know that he was not to make his movie. And yet, with enthusiasm and gusto, he proceeds to tell a story of unbelievable coincidences, all the stars seeming to align to make this movie. He wants to create a messianic movie, a movie that not only depicts the Messiah, but that becomes the Messiah for all of us. And it seems to all go so well. He wants to meet someone, et voilà, by fortuitous incident, that person is where he is. And so on. Luck is shining on him — everything comes together, until it doesn’t. The bitterness shines through clearly, and yet it is sublimated into an almost grim acceptance: For this is life: There is no meaning unless you find it.
Let me add another cultural note here. Conductor Sergiu Celibidache was famous for not wanting to have recordings of the music he helped come to life. Luckily for us, he eventually allowed for recordings after all — with the caveat that they would never replace the immediacy of the moment. He drew from the Zen Buddhist concept of ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会): Every moment holds meaning, never to return. We may think of life as repetitious, as a sequence of similar events punctuated by the unexpected, but in fact, every situation can be thought of as meaningful, as singular, and should be treated as such (you may also see my poem “One Moment in Time” based on that concept). Some people call this “mindfulness” — although I detest that word it has become commodified beyond its original meaning and is nowadays used to excuse truly mindless activities as meaningful, but not for the sake of actual meaning, but to somewhat maximize efficiency.
Now, let’s take all three ideas together — Frankl / Wildgans, Jodorowsky, and Celibidache / Moment-Focus.
We are living at a time that sees the world in stress. There is a feeling of cataclysmic change, of polycrisis, multicrisis, or however you may want to call it. Challenges to democracy, rise of autocratic challenges, coupled with worsening climate change, a continuing pandemic (notwithstanding common pretension that everything is a-ok), rising inflation, increased migration, old and new wars, and maybe the beginning of World War III (if you ask Bernard-Henri Lévy, we are indeed in its beginning).
Everywhere you look, there is an overarching sense of dread and pain, of worry, transparent denialism, depression, anger, disappointment, and — most of all — a sense of futility.
Any young person today who looks at life with a sense of pessimism cannot quite be faulted for it. Any older person thinking “at least we’ve had a good run until now” is probably not alone in this sentiment.
Nevertheless though, as citizens, we have a responsibility to counter the dread, to counter the negativity and to make the world better, even if it can only be effective on a small scale. Anything helps.
And yet, this is not what I am talking about now.
First, we need to recenter ourselves. We need to recognize the truth of our situation. We need to allow ourselves to shut out the world for a moment, and focus on ourselves, and on our connection to that which provides meaning for us.
Only we can answer for ourselves how we react to life, how we react to tragedy, to challenge, to failure. For we will, indeed, fail one time or other in life. Not everything works out. The future is annoyingly unpredictable. As Neil deGrasse Tyson keeps reminding us, “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” This scientifically minded statement is nothing but the restatement of the age-old insight of any religion ever, namely that the universe (or whatever it is that is called God) is always greater than us, always beyond our complete understanding. It demands humility of us, whether we like it or not.
Following the combined philosophical trace laid above — whether Jewish, Christian or Buddhist —, one of the purposes of life can be to reduce suffering. If we look at ourselves, this can be achieved by realizing that we are all in pain, but that we can choose whether we suffer or not.
Suffering is not the same as pain. I can take my cross and complain about it — and everyone else in the world will say, so what? Look at mine. I can fall down under my cross and keep lying in the street, pitying myself and waiting to be pitied. I can see others fall under theirs and respond with cynicism. Or I can try to carry my cross and do what I can in spite of it. I am allowed to recognize my pain for a moment, but then I need to move on from it. After all, not acknowledging reality is not helpful. But we cannot, must not let our situation govern our life completely. We need to find ways to still build ourselves our soul. We need to find out how to use the fire that nearly burnt us to still find meaning. We may find that our cross is just as heavy as we can carry it. We can choose not to suffer, in spite of our pain. We can, must, choose life over death, love over hate, caring over indifference.
— Kirk: “My God, Bones. What have I done?” McCoy: “What you had to do. What you always do… turn death into a fighting chance to live.” (after having destroyed the Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
Erratic Attempts 