The Teacher speaks again:
I applied myself to the understanding … of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind… I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. “Laughter,” I said, “is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?” I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives. (Ecclesiastes 1:17, 2:1-3)
The meaninglessness of “madness and folly,” and especially of the distractions and substances people use to induce and treat it, is ably portrayed in the first part of Garden State. Andrew Largeman (played by Zach Braff, who also wrote and directed the movie) has come home to New Jersey, the “Garden State,” for his mother’s funeral.
In the eyes of his friends he is successful, since he has a job acting in a TV series, but in actual fact he is on lithium and a multitude of other mood stabilizers—prescribed for him by his angry psychiatrist father, who blames Andrew for his mother’s paralysis and projects the guilt onto him. Andrew’s friend tells him that the whole town is “so messed up” because of drug usage, and he sees this firsthand when he goes to a party where drugs and alcohol abound. He is depicted as sitting alone in the middle of the party while all around him is a flurry of people trying to have a good time.
One of several themes in the movie is how people use drugs (whether prescribed or illegal) to keep from facing pain and meaninglessness in their lives, and to keep from engaging in real relationships with others. It is when Andrew engages in a real way with an epileptic girl named Sam who shares her joy in her pets and family and life in general that he is eventually able to begin to renounce his drug dependence and forgive and reach out to his father.
I’m not alone, cause the TV’s on, yeah
I’m not crazy, cause I take the right pills every day…
(Jimmy Eat World, “Bleed American,” 2004)
There are plenty of substances we use to kill the pain in our society, whether they are ingested (drugs, alcohol, food) or taken in another way (TV, porn, games, etc.). The problem is that they also numb us to what is really meaningful.
For reflection and discussion:
- How have you used or abused substances to try to “cheer yourself”—to numb the pain of meaninglessness? What was/is the pain or void you were trying to escape?
- One of the problems with pleasurable activities is that if we are relying on them on their own to make us feel better, there is a law of diminishing returns. The same “dose” does not feel as good in subsequent times, and must be increased to have the same effect. How have you observed this in your own life? In those around you?
- How has the use/abuse of these things isolated you from relating to people around you?
Lent Thought: Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. (John 19:28-29)
