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Jarhead and the Life of the Non-Event
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(minor spoilers ahead)
Some folks say that we're all put on this planet for a reason. If that's true, my friend - I'll call him Dave - was born to play hockey. Dave loved hockey since he was two years old. At an age when most kids would sleep with their favorite blankets or stuffed animals, he would sleep with his hockey stick. When he got older, I remember him telling me, over and over again: "I was born to play hockey." Apparently, Dave was right. He was the best hockey player in his class . . . and eventually in his school . . . and eventually, many would say in the entire state. One day when he was walking across the street, a girl was busy putting on her makeup on while she was driving, and knocked Dave twenty feet across the concrete. He recovered just fine, except for his knees. He eventually got to where he could walk again, but that accident ended his hockey career. After that happened, he started smoking a lot, and drinking even more. He started playing a lot of video games and watching a lot of television - everything except hockey. Everybody told him to "get over it" - roll with the punches, get back in the game, and so on. But between me and him, when I get him alone, and when we really talk about stuff that's on our minds, he tell me the same thing: "I was born to play hockey." Eventually, he did "get over it," in a way. He stopped drinking and smoking so much, he started getting out of the house a little more, he started working again in school and at his job. But I know, and a few others know - he's not the same. It's hard to describe, exactly - maybe the best way to say it is that some of the spark in his eye is gone. It seems like that girl with the makeup didn't just knock his knees out from under him, she also knocked some of his spirit out of him. And to be honest, the thought haunts me almost as much as it haunts Dave: what if he was born to play hockey?
Some folks say that we're put on this planet for a reason. So, what is that reason, exactly? Lots of folks have answers to this question, and most of them are different. Sociobiologists say that we're basically here to breed - to pass our genes on to the next generation. Religious people say that we're here to worship, serve, glorify, do the will of God. Partiers say we're here just to have a good time and to be happy. Workers think we should basically do our jobs, pay our bills, pay our taxes, and do the best we can to get through the day. And so on. Dave's reason for being on the planet - he thought - was to play hockey. "Boobie", in the movie Friday Night Lights, thought he was born to play football. Coach Herb Brooks, in the movie Miracle, told his team that they were born to play this game. There's a girl I know, Alice, and she'll tell you that she was born to be a mother. And in the movie Jarhead, a kid named Swoff and a whole platoon of other Marines were trained to be soldiers. As far as the Marines were concerned, being a soldier was what they were born to do. What happens when you were born to do something, and you can't do it?
It seems to me that there's something we need more than food, more than water, more than air. It might sound cheesy to say . . . but I really do think that there's something more valuable to us than any of those things: to put a word around it, I'll call it "meaning." "Meaning", to me, is what put the spark in Dave's eye. It's what made Boobie shine as a football player. It's what makes Alice sleep barely four hours a night, on good nights. It's what made the hockey players in Miracle - and the soldiers in Jarhead - endure torture, and willingly. When there's meaning, or a purpose, or a good reason for believing in something, people will willingly give up food, and water, and air, and their lives - everything - for some great purpose, for some great reason, for something - whatever it is - that's worth it. But if meaning is taken away, or simply not present for whatever reason . . . what you're left with is meaningless. Emptiness. Hollowness. Whatever it is that's left after Dave got hit by that car. It's what drives people to alcohol, drugs, suicide, bad television . . . some people say it's what drives us to do anything. Some philosophers have worked on the problem of meaninglessness, and they say we have to work to create meaning, and it's a conscious, deliberate effort. We need to build our own meaning, even if they are small, tiny, fragile little bubbles of meaning that are surrounded by a cold and hard backdrop of emptiness and meaninglessness - backdrops that occasionally, swoop in and knock your knees right out from under you.
In Jarhead, a group of young men were trained to be soldiers. They were prepped and prepared for battle, for a day when they would be in the fight of their lives. And, at least in the story told by the movie Jarhead . . . that day never came. There's a certain flavor of experience that comes with preparing for an event that never happens. Preparing for a battle that never takes place, dressing for a prom that never comes, cooking a meal that never gets eaten, planning a wedding that never happens, building a great invention that never gets appreciated . . . there's something about the experience of this that seems to invalidate everything that came before it, no matter how enjoyable (or agonizing) the experience of preparation might have been. And that applies even moreso, when the event you're preparing for is your life. So what happens when you were trained - or even born to do something - and then you can't do it? In Jarhead, at least, you wind up a corpse. The main character in the movie, in a way, wasn't Swoff the narrator, or the drill sergeant, or the girlfriend - it was Troy, the guy who lied about his criminal record to get into the Marines . . . because there was nothing else for him. For him, the Marines became his answer to the problem of life. It became his meaning-system. And on some level, Troy knew it. If your whole life depends on finding some meaning in this world, and Troy's entire meaning-system was based on being a Marine sniper, then Troy's enter life was based on being a Marine. Like any human, he wanted to do what he was born to do. When he was prevented from doing that - when he was prevented from taking the one opportunity for a shot as a sniper . . . he went berserk - or in another way, he was forced to swallow a heavy, clogging, throat-full of meaninglessness. And when the same thing happened later - when he was forced to leave the Marines - he wound up a corpse. There's a message in the movie Fight Club about young men - smart and strong and able young men who are full of life and are ready, and eager, even, for some great mission . . . but who have nothing to do. It's a generation of men who have been raised in a time when at least some of the people around them - however successful or unsuccessful that might be - are dedicated to the idea that men are essentially useless - or at least, unnecessary. And for some men, all the sweat and blood and tears and training, and . . . nothing to do, but fire bullets into the air - bullets that hit nothing, and are fired for no reason aside from venting some of the well-trained, finely-honed, pent-up aggression that has no better outlet.
So why are we here? Is it just to get our kicks before we hit the grave? Is it just to survive as long as we can? Is it to worship, serve, glorify, do the will of God? Is it to be a football player, hockey player, soldier? Is it to be a worker, parent, tax-payer, shelf-restocker, middle-manager? We all sense that there's some reason - something important, some great goal, some noble mission, that we're a part of in our brief little time on this planet. We have a very urgent, crucial task that we must accomplish. All our work and efforts and sweat and struggle are leading towards . . . something. Some great, glorious day in the sun, some day when we bask in some incredible, life-giving . . . something . . . some . . . something . . . that makes it all worthwhile. Marines, and hockey teams, and football teams, and children, and a thousand other things speak to this. They call us to action, point us in a direction, and tell us who, and how, and what we are. They harness all this, and galvanize it, giving it a concrete form. And sometimes they're wrong. Wives and husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends cheat, loved ones die, companies go out of business . . . if everything changes, as is apparently the case, then all meaning-systems that are based on something - or actually, that are based on anything - will collapse too. But could it be that what collapses isn't the source of meaning, but the vehicle for it? Could it be that what changes isn't that . . . something . . . that is meaningful in itself, but just the particular form that it takes for a particular person? Could it be that there is still meaning, outside of everything that collapses, that can still give us reason to live, even when it seems like it's completely and entirely gone? I, for one, suspect there is.
So, what is it? And, how do we find it? Well . . . it seems to me that the first step is to figure out what it's not. To figure out that sometimes it disappears, with the opening of a "Dear John" letter or the dab of a girl's makeup. And then to wonder about it - after all, it doesn't disappear for everybody, at the same time . . . and for some people, it doesn't disappear at all. And so on. At some point, there can be a "becoming curious" about the whole thing . . . which can make a person wonder what it is that makes life meaningful - any life - meaningful, at all. And then, that person can start looking for something that's meaningful, and can start searching for whatever that . . . something . . . is, that lies at the source of all meaning. And at a certain point, that person might become a seeker. And after that person becomes a seeker, maybe they'll find it, one day, in the sands of Iraq. Or if not there, maybe somewhere else.
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