Paralyzed And Free

I saw Julian Schnabel's new film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly about Mr. Jean-Dominique Bauby who is paralyzed head to toe with 'locked in' syndrome but who shares his experiences through a yes/no responding by blinking one eye. In the story, Mr. Bauby transcends his frozen body to share our humanity, kindness and compassion, both in his external world of physical therapists, friends, and family and the internal world of his own creation.

His story, blinked out one letter at a time, is painfully slow, forcing us the viewer - the fast-paced observer - to slow to the excruciating new pace of life in Bauby's world. Yet soon the letters flow with greater speed and within the 2 hour film, I found the pace of communication acceptable, I had slowed to Bauby's pace of living, I became content in his world as did he. Schnabel brought Bauby and me to the same place, a place of gratitude for humanity, magnified by the stillness of a body.

Against this still life, the fullness of imagination and memory were evident, gushing out through dreams - day and night - and blinked out to share with others. His story teaches so much, the frailty of life, the power of kindness and compassion, and the capacity within us all to be content. What brings contentment to life is to know the sufficiency of it, to know what is present is enough, even if from another's perspective it seems far from it. As I look around my life and others and see the inequalities of access - to health, to wealth, to life experiences - I also know that contentment arises from within with equal access to all. In painful life experiences, we often learn to become less dependent on external experiences to find contentment.

In those experiences we shift our awareness toward the inner landscape and sift through emotions and thoughts to find a place of peace and tranquility, in the midst of anguish. Bauby discovers that place and shares it with us. As I get up today to do the many 'doing' things of life, I am reminded of Maya Angelou's quote, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Bauby stopped 'doing' when his body became locked in place, but in that new form, he did more than perhaps ever before to help others feel happy, to discover the sufficiency of life, to find contentment.

Comments

[paysonjewelry]

How incredibly beautiful and poignant! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this film - it stirs the very best of humanity in my soul.
Payson
www.paysonjewelry.com

[julia06]

This is a great book.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was a best seller in France.

Don't forget there is excellent National Health Care in France so unfortunately most Americans would not get the same quality of care.

[rini]

You know, I am going to admit it, now.

I think that human life is amazing and many people have great courage.

However, I find even reading about his movie very depressing. LIfe is fragile. I just have to read the news to see evidence of that. I don't want to dwell on it.

[KOisGod]

In order to experience the Divine, we have to "out of our minds"...

[gabbeh]

A friend of mine had a stroke that left her with locked-in-syndrome. She did not receive the special care that Mr. Bauby received and languished in a hospital and nursing facility for 4 years without any means of connecting to her daughters or other family. I could not look into her mind, but when I visited her I would not say that her eyes, the only part of her that showed any kind of expression, showed inner peace. Rather, I felt her pain at being locked into herself, and unable to experience her two lovely 20-something daughters. Imagine the pain of seeing but being totally unable to connect. Like Mr. Bauby, my friend died of pneumonia.

[MissingAmerica]

Thank you for this beautiful reminder that peace begins with us, and peace begins inside. Helen Keller was an avid reader, and became interested in the Eastern practice of looking inside, not outside, to find your place. When asked about these meditative experiences, she once commented that she was the luckiest person in the world. She stated that while the average human being has to find time and learn to go within, to experience those rare moments of total silence, concentration and peace, she was blessed with the ability to live in a meditative state 24/7. Mr. Bauby has shown us, once again, that peace is available to each of us, if we are willing to go inside to experience it. As we are to ourselves, we are to others. What a great lesson. Namaste!

[XCITIZEN]

I appreciate the message of your post. But I find it hard to really take in when you constantly refer to 'place of this' and 'place of that' - 'place of peace and tranquility' etc. I know it's that 'new age therapy-speak'. I counted 5 uses in the post. It's beginning to sound a little cliche. If experience really is so complex, why use a catch-all phrase that ultimately doesn't really say much?

[cktirumalai]

The Roman Stoics held that the only thing which mattered and the only thing which one could control, through long reflection and training, was composure of mind: external circumstances, including the state of one's body, are subject to vagaries, and therefore one should cultivate a certain indifference toward them. Seneca's "Moral Essays" set out the Stoic view fully and eloquently.
Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist, is not as completely impaired as Mr. Bauby but he lives with profound physical limitations. Some years ago the whole world thrilled to the soaring quality of his mind.