Pursuit of Happyness
This column is the only self-help book you will ever need. I am going to tell you a secret, just between you and I. You are mediocre, middle of the road, average. You cannot have it all. Some aspect of your life will be more undesirable than a nude nursing home calendar and more screwed up than a monkey playing Beethoven on a piano. There is no giant within. You probably will not achieve your dreams. You will probably never be a millionaire. If you are a woman, you backside will always look too big in your jeans. If you are young, sit outside the nearest restaurant and watch the older people go in and out. That is your future. That is what you will look like. About your mid-30s, you will get a pain somewhere in your body that will be like a rock in your shoe the rest of your life. Turn to the one you love, you know that little habit they have that kind of cute. If you are lucky enough to survive 4 or 5 decades of marriage that little habit will make you want to drink antifreeze. Your marriage will be tough sledding at times for days, weeks, months, years, and in some cases decades. He or she will not understand you. At some point you will want to leave your sweetie but it is just too much work to pack a suitcase. Then that person of the opposite sex at work who thinks you are interesting only thinks that because they don’t know you. If you are a man, you will have a 50/50 shot of cursing your former wife’s name once a month as you print her name on the child support check. Your children will be only special to you. At several points in your life, they will blame all their problems on you, and you know what, they will be right. That boyfriend or girlfriend that they bring home that you cannot stand, you cannot stand them because they are you or the bad decision you married. On your retirement day, you will limp out of the place and no one will miss you a week later. When you die, no one will remember you 100 years from now. The hardest things in life you have just got to work like a dog and white knuckle through. Now that you have got all that weight of expectation off your chest, enjoy life. I’m not saying that I am any better than you. I pulled off the amazing feat of having my own relative fire me a few years back for being such a screw up.
Our expectations when it comes to life often get in the way of enjoying the thing. From the time we are born we are told by the advertisements surrounding us that we don’t measure up. We dream of that perfect life and there to help us achieve it is the self-help industry. It is a $8.5 billion industry in this country and that is not including the gospel of health and wealth that too many of our churches have bought into. Its history probably goes back to 1732 with Ben Franklin’s “tips for better living” in Poor Richard’s Almanac. But the modern industry came into being with 1967’s best seller I’m OK – Your OK. (I have always want to write a satire of self-help books entitled I’m Screwed Up – Your Screwed Up – So Leave Me The Hell Alone.) Oprah is the queen of daytime and the most powerful woman in America. Dr. Phil rolls in a big pile of money selling his homespun catch phrases to Oprah’s zombies. Dr. Laura Schlessinger instructs women in how to be the perfect Stepford wife. Tony Robbins wants you to have your date with destiny, but make sure your check has his name spelled correctly. Rush Limbaugh pimps out his gospel that the only thing keeping you from being great are liberals. Men From Mars and Women Are From Venus promises the perfect relationship. (Relationships are like vacations. You will never have a perfect one because you always bring yourself along.) It is all a big treadmill to get you comeback again and again.
The thing I hate about this three-ring circus of an industry is the low self-esteem and blaming that result when a person does not achieve their personal utopia. The poor are poor because they are lazy. If you don’t make it, you have only yourself to blame. If you study the big “successes” in this world, you often find a lot of luck involved in their climb. The right person at the right time said yes to them. With most of them worked extremely hard, the stars all came into alignment to give them the window for success. Bill Gates would be just another software consultant at IBM if some executive at Big Blue had just bought DOS. Limbaugh would be a little heard of disc jockey if the Reagan administration had not repealed the fairness in broadcasting law. Bill Clinton would have just been another governor of a backwater state and a name at the bottom of a Penthouse letter if Ross Perot had not gotten in, then out, and then back in the Presidential race again in 1992. George W. Bush would probably just be getting out of prison now if he had gotten pulled over by the right Texas police officer back when he liked putting white powder up his nose. Kevin Smith would still be a video store clerk if someone at Sundance had decided to pass on his badly shot black-and-white film. There are thousands of amazing actors, singers, and artists who never make it as hard as they tried. The only thing pulling yourself up by your bootstraps gets you is a bad back.
I am writing all of this because liberal Hollywood has just made a film that conservatives will love like a teenage boy discovering porn. The Pursuit of Happyness is based on the true story of Chris Gardner, a homeless, black single father who went from living out of a bus station locker to being a millionaire. Chris, who has been feature on 20/20 and is now a motivational speaker, is living the American dream. Money. Nice suits. Rolex. Fancy cars. Hanging out with Michael Jordan and Nelson Mandela. Pretty good for a kid from a single parent home in Milwaukee who barely finished high school. How did Chris go from zero to hero? One day he was sitting in a parking lot in San Francisco trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life when I man in a fancy car pulled up. He asked the man what he did and the gentleman replied that he was a stockbroker. Chris decided that that life looked pretty good to him. He spent the next 10 months knocking on every door possible looking for a trainee spot in one of the firms. Finally, he got his chance. He was on his way to Dean Witter for the final interview when he was pulled over by a police officer. He spent the next 10 days in jail because he owed $1,200 for unpaid parking tickets. Returning home, he found everything gone. It seems his wife had had enough, moved out, and took everything with her including his son and all his clothes. He showed up to Dean Witter looking like a wreck. Wearing the same clothes he had on when he went to jail. Rather than lie, figuring he had nothing to loose, Chris told the truth. It seems that the guy doing the interview had also been through a messy divorce and decided to hire him. A few months later, his wife showed up at the boardinghouse he was staying at and said she couldn’t take care of the kid anymore. A couple of little problems. The boardinghouse had a no children policy and taking care of the toddler cost more than his $1,000-a-month trainee salary. He was on the street. The Pursuit of Happyness focuses on this time period. In order to get his dream job, Chris had to beat-out 20 better educated people and at the same time find shelter for his son. Nothing will stop Chris from his dream. Not even getting hit by a car. The moral of the story is don’t let anyone tell you, you cannot make it.
It is the ultimate Oprah movie. I just hope Chris remembers to thank Rev. Cecil Williams who let Chris and his son stay at his homeless shelter for women for free even though it violated policy. Williams kindness allowed Chris to save his $1,000 a month pay and in a few weeks rent a house. The good reverend also took it upon himself to introduce Chris to many of the more powerful people in the community, providing him with the connections he would need to be a success. But that wouldn’t be as good a story. I like this movie and think it will be the sleeper hit of the Christmas season because it certainly is a feel good film. Still, like space aliens, ESP, and ghosts, what happens in movies might not correspond to what happens in real life. Life is all about hard work, but there is also a lot of luck involved. Chris’ world could easily have turned out dramatically different. It is why I believe in inexpensive education and in social programs to help those at a disadvantage. We all never our Rev. Williams even if he comes in the form of a government program.
Verdict: The Feel Good Film of the Season