I’ve been contemplating the idea of ‘Gun to Head’ moments. This is a phrase I started using after seeing Fight Club. The moment Tyler grabs a convenience store clerk, puts a gun to his head, makes him confess what he truly wants to be doing with his life, and then threatens to come back and kill him if he fails to do something to achieve that goal. If someone were to put a gun to our heads, force us to truly state what we want to accomplish with our lives and then threaten to kill us if we don’t take steps to achieve that goal, would it be a moment of clarity for us or would it just cause us to piss our pants?
The question I am more interested in, though, is can we put a gun to our own heads (metaphorically speaking of course) and threaten ourselves enough to cause a moment of clarity?
What is essential for a moment of clarity? Consider what is happening in that scene from Fight Club. This clerk is faced with an insane man holding a gun to his head. At that moment the clerk is faced with the very essence of what it is to be human, a desire to stay alive and avoid harm. That isn’t human nature, that is animal nature. It is a primal raw force in every living thing. The clerk’s mind is focused on doing whatever it takes to prolong his life which leads him to answer the questions being asked. Once he is in that mode, he has no reason to lie. There is no indication from the crazy man that one answer is going to appease him over any other answer.
The clerk is in a mental and emotional zone that all he wants to do is survive. All other elements of his life are stripped away. All the noise of his life is stripped away. He isn’t thinking about how to get laid. He isn’t thinking about what he wants for dinner. He isn’t thinking about whether he will get home in time to watch a favorite TV show. He isn’t thinking about how cool his car is or should be or if he needs a bigger TV set. There is only one thing on his mind, the answer to the question, “What do you want to do with your life? ”
To achieve our own moments of clarity we need to strip away all the noise in our lives, all the stuff that doesn’t matter. What do you want to do with your life? You aren’t asked to think about how to pay off your debts doing it. You aren’t asked if this will make your parents proud. You aren’t asked if you currently have the skills and knowledge to do it. The question is simple.
What do you want to do with your life? What job do you want? How do you want to spend your time? Will you be on your death bed wishing you had caught that one episode of Law and Order, you know the one, the one where they arrest a guy and prosecute him. Yeah, that episode. Or maybe you’ll be on your deathbed bemoaning the fact that you had a 36 inch TV instead of a 52 inch plasma TV. Doubtful. Really, really doubtful.
I’m not a big fan of trying to live your life from the point of view of what you will have wanted to do through the lenses of the deathbed, because if that were the case, I wouldn’t spend time washing dishes. Books I want to read would have the same weight as movies and TV shows.
The truth of it is on the deathbed of course we will have wanted to experience more of life. The deathbed is not a great moment of clarity. Near death, near destruction, near catastrophe can be moments of clarity because they don’t remove your from the basic responsibilities of life. Once the moment has passed we still have to pay the mortgage, provide for our family, and meet our social obligations. The best thing that can happen is it alters our perception of value of these things.
So instead of watching that episode of Law and Order, maybe we take a step towards doing the thing we really want to be doing with our lives. Instead of upgrading our home theater systems, we take that money and take a class so we can gain the knowledge and skills needed to do the thing we want to be doing with our lives.
I don’t know how to manufacture that moment of clarity, though. The best I can offer is to say that sometimes we need to put ourselves in the place of that clerk. Some deranged man has a gun at our heads and is asking us what we want to do with our lives.
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