Wisdom tells us that everything is at it should be. It tells us that there are purposes to everything even though we can’t always see what it is. I used to think that when clergy members were asked why bad things happen and they gave the answer, we can never know God’s plan, that it is was a big load of BS. I now understand what they mean. There is a macro view of the world that we can’t see. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is a universal law. I don’t know if God’s handwriting is already written in the stars, as they say, but I believe that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Each person makes choices in life. Each choice comes with a consequence – good or bad – and it is all connected.
“We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.” ~ Stephen Hawking
My husband and I recently watched every episode of Breaking Bad in a three-week time span. When you watch a full series from start to finish so quickly, it becomes easy to see all of the things we can learn from the various events. Things that may not seem connected if viewed over a longer time period suddenly stand out as being completely connected. The connections between people – some of whom don’t even know each other exist – are startling. My husband and I were fascinated by the story as it unfolded, as well as the brilliant writing and acting. If you watched the series on television over a long period of time I would urge you to watch it again over a short period of time. You will be fascinated by what you notice. Seemingly random events are tied together as the results of decisions made by each character. Watching the whole series fast helps to keep every event in your mind so you can see how it all ties together. It is a truly fascinating, crazy and sometimes funny show.
In case you have never seen it, the story is about a middle-aged man named Walter White and his much younger business partner, Jesse Pinkman. Walter is a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher who is turning fifty years old. He has a beautiful family; a loving wife who is pregnant with their second child and a teenage son who has Cerebral Palsy, and other family members who play prominent roles in his life. When the story opens we see Walter and Jesse in a crazy situation and we have to keep watching to find out what happens and how this craziness all came about in the first place. We learn that before this crazy situation started Walter learned some news that changed his life and the lives of his entire family. Rather, he changed their lives based on the ensuing choices he made. His rationale behind every choice is clear and on the surface seems justified, at least in his own mind. He sets aside right and wrong at every turn. He is clearly stuck in his head, unable to step back and take a look at the lies he tells himself. He justifies every action he takes as having good intentions towards his family.
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” ~ Oscar Wilde
As I watched the beginning of the story and Walter began to make some bad decisions and choices, even knowing some of the reasons he made those choices, I couldn’t help but wonder how he could justify some of the extreme behavior. It did not seem rational for him to make the leaps he made. Then we learn more information about his background and one more piece of the puzzle comes into view. Things from his past come to his awareness once again to help him justify his behavior in his own mind.
We make a connection with the characters right from the start of the show. The writers use humor in some extreme situations that we would not normally find funny and this helps us to connect with the main characters. After all, you never want to think badly of someone you like. There are characters in the show that we should be completely sympathetic with; they do all the right things that we would expect them to do in society, but we do not sympathize with them because we already sympathize the main characters. We see the pain of the main characters much more clearly than the others. It is stunning when you realize that you have a different view than the one you normally would in a real-life situation. You find yourself wondering how you could root for the people you are rooting for! We respond to the main characters in the opposite way we normally would. However, we do that because we understand their rationale and the reasoning behind their actions. As you follow the story you can understand why Walter and Jesse think the way they think and how they justify their choices and actions. You get to know them and you get to like them. They are charming, funny, vulnerable, loving and they are relatable to the average person. You understand their hardships and you cheer their triumphs. You can see a little bit of yourself or someone you know in their characters. And that right there is one of our connections to every other human being on the planet.
In our lives, we don’t get to know every other person that lives. We don’t see the world from the macro view and that makes it difficult to understand people’s behavior at times. We don’t get to see their lives unfold the way we do in a television show or movie. Usually, we know one little detail about a person – their huge mistake – and from that one detail we make a severe judgment. When someone does something wrong, or when someone has a bad attitude we don’t stop to think of what might have led them to become the person they are. We don’t stop to think about how they might be rationalizing it in their mind. We forget that the events we go through in our lives help to shape who we are and the choices we make. No one on earth can say they have made the right choice in every situation they have faced. However, even while knowing this, we are still quick to judge others for their mistakes. We never want to feel like we may be even remotely similar to someone who has made a huge mistake, especially when they have harmed people.
There are some people whose actions and choices we must deal with as a society and some choices are horrific. When horrific events occur we want immediate comfort. We are told, in the words of Fred Rogers, to look for the helpers. That is fine in the short term, but it does nothing for our society. It makes us feel good at the moment. And labeling the person as a monster does too, but it causes us to ignore the broader issue of what happened in that person’s life to get them to that horrific point in their life. If we remember that we don’t know the struggles of the person committing the offense and we examine our own choices as well as our sympathy for criminal characters in entertainment, we will stop seeing them as monsters, different from ourselves. You might think the only reason you feel comfortable liking and rooting for a criminal character on a show is because you know it’s not real. However, I will bet there has been a time when you judged someone’s actions and later discovered a little more about their background and felt some sympathy for them. When we know what someone has been through, empathy comes more easily. We can hold a person accountable for their actions while still recognizing that they are a person with a history we don’t know. We can acknowledge that given the same set of life circumstances we might have behaved the same way they did. You just never know. Of course, I am not saying we should suddenly condone and accept criminal behavior. I am saying we need to take a step back from our initial judgment of things that happen in our society and look at the history of the individuals involved. We should try to remember that we don’t know their full story. We may never know it, but this is one reason to suspend our judgment and look for reasons to show compassion.
“You teach people how to treat you.” ~ Dr. Phil McGraw
One of the things that stood out to me in Breaking Bad was that very few of the characters loved themselves. Many of the characters had low self-esteem and tried desperately to make themselves feel more worthy of respect and love. The one person that seemed to accept himself completely was Walter’s son. He spoke his mind and told the truth about how he felt in every situation. Walter, Jr. never sugar-coated his words. He has CP but it did not get him down. He felt no need to overcompensate for what others might see as his problems. There is a scene where some kids were making fun of him and he felt hurt by it, but he just tried to ignore them. He seemed to be the only character who understood that respect starts from within. If Walter or Jesse loved and respected themselves, they never would have gone to the lengths they did to get it from others. Walter had the love of his family, but that was not enough since he did not feel it for himself. He felt unworthy in his own mind because of events from his past and decisions he made in the past. He compared himself to others and felt that he lacked what they had achieved financially and professionally, never stopping to see the true abundance of love in his life. He felt stupid and small which caused him to try to build himself up. He rarely stood up for himself if a family member put him down, but he did not tolerate that behavior from his business associates. He was okay with his family not knowing how powerful he was, as long as he and others he did business with knew it. He taught each group how to treat him and he understood that, when it came to his business, but he refused to stand up for himself with his family, at least for most of the series.
“The truth will set you free, but labor pains are involved.” ~ Iyanla Vanzant
Walter lived a double life and had to put on a show in both worlds. In one world he had to be gentle and kind, acting as if nothing were different from before, but in the other world, he had to be ruthless – the complete opposite of how his family saw him. I found myself wanting him to behave in the appropriate way for every situation, for his own well being. This is what we do when we like someone. We make excuses or accept the excuses they give us, and we put up with a lot of bad behavior sometimes because we want them to be okay. We don’t want to make things harder for them by refusing to accept their excuses or to challenge them. We believe that by accepting it we are helping them, but the reality is that we are enabling them to self-destruct much more slowly than they would otherwise. We help them push the lesson they need to learn farther down the road.
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The façade came naturally to Walter, but the other characters did not always have a good poker face. Behind closed doors, they fell apart and in some cases they fell apart right out in the open, causing others to question what was going on. When we do what we know is wrong, it affects us deeply. When we don’t really buy the excuses being made, either by someone else or ourselves, it takes a toll on our physical and psychological health. This is how the mind-body connection works.
If we were all to simply act from love – doing the right, moral thing in the name of love – no matter how difficult it is, no matter how hurt someone might be at first, our lives would improve greatly. Initially, it would feel like self-destruction. During the destruction phase, the ego would start to go crazy second-guessing. The problem is we don’t always know the right thing to do. On the surface, one thing looks right, but looking closer, something else looks right. The trick is to keep the long term in mind, remembering that taking the easy way now won’t help someone later, and what will look like harm to them now will be the best thing for them later. Doing the right thing is hard for the ego. We live in short-term self-preservation mode. This is where faith comes in. The entire Bible shows us one example after another of people doing the wrong thing, the consequences of it, and then it shows someone doing the right thing and the miracles arising out of that.
A Course in Miracles says that a miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love. We must look past the fear of what might happen now and act with love for the long term. We cannot stand in the way of someone else’s miracle if we want our own miracles to happen. Marianne Williamson explains it much better than I:
“Just like the embryo turns into a baby and a bud blossoms, your life is already programmed in the mind of God to its highest creative possibilities. The blueprint is already there. It’s like a file in a computer. If my heart is not open I can’t download the possibility on earth as it is in heaven. It’s an undeletable file, but if I don’t bring it down to the screen, if I stay in bitterness, what I get on the screen is bitter. That doesn’t mean it’s not in the computer… It’s an undeletable file. The title of that file is God’s Will.”
The situations depicted in Breaking Bad are extreme examples. Other than standing by and watching someone hurt an innocent person, I believe God’s will is to allow every person to make their choices and mistakes, so God can best lead them to Love. Every person on this earth is doing the very best they can at the time. While it seems some are failing completely, they are on a path that only they can follow. As painful as it may be to watch or to live through, sometimes the most loving thing we can do for them is to get out of the way and let God handle it.
Love to all!
