Richard ParkerThis past weekend I watched Life of Pi in 3D nogal. Over and above the beautiful visual effect, the multi-layered nature of this movie moved me deeply so I thought I would share one of the most significant insights I ever had into my own life and how that has changed me instantaneously forever.
I remember a day on a stage in Moorreesburg as part of student evangelical group being asked to tell the audience of any failures in my life. This was part of an exercise of authentic witnessing to a congregations of believers. I remember the questioner and members of the audience being astonished when I answered that I can’t recall that I had ever failed. It was an honest response as I honestly believed that I had never failed. Beneath that lied a deeply rooted narcissism which I was blissfully unaware off.
I had some therapy in my early adult life, and it really intensified during my early thirties. Around my 35th birthday I was involved in some intense weekly psycho-analytic therapy. It is during those two and half years that I made quite a number of shifts in my own make-up amongst which the courage and insight to withdraw myself from religion and faith.
The most significant break-through or insight was not during therapy but as a result of therapy. This is when I met Richard Parker.
During this time I was an avid cyclist too and had entered into the Cape Epic race – 886km over an eight day period, climbing twice the height of Everest during that time. Training for this involved between 15 to 20 hours a week. My bad luck was that two weeks before the race I fell ill to a terrible flu as athletes often do due to diminished immune systems as a result of the extreme training. I was sick for 10 days so that a routine two hour ride three days before caused my legs to ache even on the day the race started. This was quite unusual and a sign that I was in bad shape. I was not going to withdraw but I was not on top form as I would have liked to be.
Most riders in this race experience a gradual deterioration of there physique. To give you as reader some indication. My partner and I where ranked in the top third of the race and our times over the first four days were 8 hours, 9 hours, 9 hours and 7 hours. That amounts 33 hours of cycling during the first four days and there were four more to go. To put that in perspective, the average winning time for a 23 day Tour de France is 85-90 hours – our total for 8 days was 54 hours (we lost about two hours on the last day due to mechanical failure). In my case the deterioration was a little worse, or so I would like to believe, due to my recent flu. On the first day we crossed Prince Alfred pass. Where normally I was of equal strength to my partner, I was not even remotely keeping up with him on that day. I later saw a picture of me going up the pass – pale as snow.
By the third day I was in a bad shape, but quitting was not even close to my considerations. Besides my narcissistic personality would never even allow me to contemplate the thought. I did, however, start noticing an increased tendency to be more selfish. It showed up in little things: Not helping my partner carry his bag, taking the last energy bar in front of the next tired rider, focussing only on myself in every aspect. I didn’t make much of it – it is to be expected when one is so depleted, but I did become of aware of it and it was more than usual.
On the fourth day I was really spent. This is quote from the official route description “After arguably the hardest start in Cape Epic history, day four is a relative rest day”. As it turns out, it was anything but a rest day for me. As we had arranged, my partner and I did not ride together as the rules stated, but only waited for each other at designated timing spots as to not be disqualified. He off course mostly waiting for me, although on occasion where it was a flat stretch I would ride away from him even in my depleted state. The normal routine on these days were a stretch of roughly 2 hours to reach the first water or refueling point, another similar stretch to reach a major refueling point with another similar point in between this and the finish line.
A pic from that last stretch on day four where I met Richard ParkerAnd so it happened that on this particular day, somewhere between Ladismith and Barrydale in the middle of the Klein Karoo I rode the hardest stretch of cycling I have ever done in my life. It wasn’t so much that it was difficult, it was that I was so deeply depleted. I remember being isolated from every other rider in the race for miles on end – probably because we were going at a similar pace and so the distances apart remained similar. I also remember the dark Karoo stones being everywhere and like corrugation shaking through my whole body for kilometres on end. There must have been at least an hour out there where it was only me with no rider in sight. Just me battling my body, the Karoo heat and the terrain. Somewhere on this road something changed in me, which has been the catalyst for remarkable changes and resulting growth in me.
It is difficult to articulate but the closest I can come to explaining is to say that being in such a physically drained state, riding alone through unkind terrain strips you of every pretense and every defense you ever thought you had. For me there was a particular hour on that afternoon where I faced my dark side. Stripped from everything and descended into a deep emotional pit of agony there was nowhere to hide, no pretense to offer, no defense to protect me. It was just me. As I looked in that mirror I didn’t like what I saw – not like bad self-esteem dislike. It was like I was looking at that side of me that I had always denied, that I was unable to recognize on that day in Moorreesburg – that I too fail, I too am selfish, I too am a bad person. I was as if I had met my dark side – the side of me whose existence I had always denied. And here it was so prominent that I could not ignore it. It was a hard reality to face – an uncomfortable one and most importantly, an inescapable one.
In the days to follow this thought, this reality stayed with me. Like a bad dream that didn’t want to go away. True to a common occurance on these ultra races, the human body somehow gives up fighting and by day five you start to recover as strange as it may sound. I was no different so that I woke of on day five feeling stronger, almost fresh and kept getting stronger up to the finish on day eight. But this horrible realization that I was not a good person was constantly with me. As much as I could argue around it and even tried to argue it away in my head I could not escape what I had experienced on that dark afternoon of the fourth day. This is a hard reality to face for anybody, but for somebody with strong narcissistic tendencies up to that point in my life this was a very uncomfortable truth to face – tried as I may, I could not escape it.
Over the coming weeks I processed this truth, often trying to fight it away in denial. Surely I was just tired or emotional, surely I am the good person I have always thought myself to be. Every time I tried to discourse myself out of this new reality, I was faced with the knowing that what I had experienced and faced in those lonely hours on my bike, was real. Very real.
Eventually I learned to accept this as part of own identity. Even that is hard to explain. How do you accept not being a good person without trying to change that? How do you come to grips with an identity where you are less than the perfect image you had of yourself for your whole life? I guess herein lies the growth – the acceptance that it is not an “either or” situation, but an “and” situation. I am indeed every bit of this dark person I saw during the race and in particular on that lonely difficult road between Ladismith and Barrydale, but I am the same good person that helps others and care for people too. At first it is a dichotomy until it dawned on me that it is indeed like two sides of the same coin – the proverbial Yin-Yang of the Chinese culture. Knowing that I am both has changed my life.
My Yin-Yang – the tiger insideFor starters it is little bit more difficult to be narcissistic when you know that there lurks a dark side in you too. It is much harder to criticize others’ bad deeds, bad behaviour when you know that you too have that in you. So it has humbled me. Conversely it has allowed me to silence the voice in my head that people call your conscience and psychologist call your super-ego. That part of you that is the accuser when you think of doing wrong or indeed do wrong. There is a big difference between a good person doing a bad thing and bad person. Embracing that side of me that is the bad person leaves little room for being accused of doing something bad. At the same time it disempowers the narcissist to claim only goodness. It is not like I have given up on being good, just because I know I am bad too. On the contrary, now that I know that good and bad is essentially the same thing, it is so much easier to be spontaneously good without being threatened by the bad.
It reminds me of the fable of the old man who brought his two dogs to town every weekend to have them fight each other. Week after week he managed to predict right whether the white dog or the black dog will win. When asked how it is possible for him to know so accurately, he replied that the dog that he feeds in the week leading up to the fight is the dog that will win. It is a little like that for me. Every time I do good I feed the white dog and every time I do bad, it is the black dog that eats. If anything I try and live my life so that the white dog always wins.
In the hours following me seeing Life of Pi, I was so deeply moved by the analogy that the story between Pi and Richard Parker creates. As much as the author of the book (Yann Martel) and the director of the film (Ang Lee) leaves it open to its audience to choose a story, for me Pi’s journey at sea is analogous with the battle we face in every day life – the battle with our inner selves. Much like Richard Parker threatens Pi’s existence and by his own admission gives meaning to his life, and in so doing saves his life, so my dark side is the tiger in my. It keeps me on my toes, like Richard Parker keeps Pi alert. Richard Parker has the potential to kill others as it kills the hyena in the story, so my dark side has to potential to do the same to me and others.
Pi’s journey is not easy but as he moves through it, he negotiates terms with Richard Parker, sets boundaries and eventually has a healthy co-existence with Richard Parker on their journey. Much like that is the Yang in my Yin-Yang – the dark side in my life. In a way, like Pi, I have tamed or trained my inner Richard Parker.
If I didn’t meet my dark side during my mountain bike race, I may have never acknowledged its existence and my life would have been poorer for it. I am at peace with my Richard Parker and while I am always alert and aware that it might threaten my existence, I am as aware that tending to its needs give me purpose and saves me from darkness. As Pi says “…my fear of him keeps me alert, tending to his needs gives my life purpose”. His presence in my life gives me freedom to be human in a way that I did not experience before.
The adult Pi says in the movie that in the end life becomes a journey of letting go as he had to let go of Richard Parker. I concur. My Richard Parker has allowed me to let go of a lot a false beliefs I had about myself and allowed me to embrace a richer reality about myself. Adult Pi says Richard Parker wasn’t just a reflection of his own emotions as his father had suggested but real to him. He wishes he could say: “Thank you for saving my life, I love you Richard Parker. You’ll always be with me”. I am so pleased that I am able to say that to my tiger – even if he growls at me more often than I would like him to.
This is from the book. Apology for the music, but the quotes are powerful and true.
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