Taking the road less traveled

So, as I've mentioned in the past couple of weeks, I'm a big fan of the TV show Breaking Bad. For those of you unfamiliar with it, I'll give a brief synopsis. It tells the story of a high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, who is dying of cancer. His health insurance won't cover the costs of his treatment, and his wife is pregnant with a child they hadn't planned on. His son has MS. So basically he's about to die, and leave his family with a pile of debt that they have no hope of paying off. So he ends up manufacturing crystal meth, and because of his chemistry background, he's able to make the purest form ever seen. He ends up partnering with one of his former students, and eventually becomes a major player in the drug trade in the southwest US.

It's a fabulous show, for so many reasons. Bryan Cranston plays Walter White. Most of you would know him as the dad in Malcolm in the Middle. And if that's the only thing you know him from, you'll be amazed at just how good of a dramatic actor he is. Aaron Paul plays his partner, and also does a great job. But the real star of the show is the writing. They constantly put these characters into situations that the show's creator calls the "watercooler" moments, in reference to the old practice of people standing around the watercooler discussing interesting shows the following day. His goal is to create these situations that are 100% grey, no black, no white.

The whole concept of the show is a grey area, really. What would you do for the people that you love? To what lengths would you sacrifice your own health, sanity, freedom, morality, even your soul if you so choose to believe in one? What would you give up in order to secure the future of the people that you love? I think that in the beginning, most of us would be willing to do almost anything, especially if we knew that we were going to die soon. I know that I would. I, of course, have the added benefit of not believing in God, and therefore don't worry much about Judgement Day. I try to live a life that is fairly moral and good, but it is because I choose to be that way, not because I'm afraid there might be consequences if I don't. So if I were going to be dead soon, I would do what I had to do to make things as easy as possible for the ones I love. Not everyone would go that route, but I think that most of us would have that as our first instinct.

The problems that follow afterwards though are the ones that are interesting to me. As the show progresses over the course of now 3 seasons, Walter finds that he likes the power and control over his life that being the bad guy allows him to have. He keeps trying to look at himself as a good person, who is only doing this for his family. But the further he goes down that road, the less it is about that, and the more it is about the allure of the darker path. There's a great scene in season 2 where he's in a hardware store, and he spots a guy with all the things to cook meth. He goes over to the guy and tells him all the things he's doing wrong. Then he is in the parking lot, and spots the guy with his partner. He goes over and tells them to stay the hell out of his territory. You can see the pleasure that he gets out of exerting that power. Six months before, he was nothing but a chemistry teacher, and now he's this person of almost mythic proportions. And he can't get enough of it.

I could go on and on about the show. Netflix it, rent it, whatever you have to do, but watch it. It's that good.

However, I don't want to make this blog ENTIRELY about the show. Rather, I just want to talk about the nature of good and evil a bit. The two scenes that have popped into my head are the Empire Strikes Back "You don't know the POWER of the Dark Side", and the scene in the bar in Se7en, where Morgan Freeman is telling Brad Pitt "Of course it's easier to steal what you need, rather than to earn it..." Evil is easier, because you have less to answer for. Being good requires a lot more work. This is true on all levels, not just the grandiose. It's easier to sit on the couch eating Ben and Jerry's than it is to eat a salad and go to the gym. It's easier to let things pile up on your desk than it is to actually pay bills, file the paperwork, and keep on top of things. It's definitely easier to ignore the people in your life who need time, effort, help, love, compassion, until such time as YOU need those things, or have something else to gain by devoting time to them.

I see the tendrils of this topic spreading into so many different areas. It is almost overwhelming to think about when you step back and look at the bigger picture here. It touches on the overly litigious nature of our society in the past 30-40 years. It certainly impacts the fact that our apathy in general, and especially in the educational system, have crippled us on an international scale. It explains how we have allowed ourselves to become so depressed as a societal whole that we take more Prozac, Paxil and Xanax in this country in a month than the rest of the world combined takes in a year. Even the US Army, the last bastion of truth, justice and the American way, this week came out with changes to their boot camp training, adjusting for "softer" kids, raised on video games.

Too many of us choose the easy path now. Too many people refuse to put forth the effort for something more. It scares me, not because I think it affects me, but because I don't see it changing in my lifetime. I don't know how it will. We reached the tipping point somewhere in the last 20 years, and I don't think we can ever get it back. For me personally, it's actually a good thing. I'm smarter and work harder than the average person, so I will be more in demand in this new world order. Furthermore, I don't have kids, so I don't have to worry about the declining state of affairs that my children will have to contend with.

I do, however, care about my world. I care about the future for my nieces and nephew, and for the children of my friends. I care about society in general. As I've said before, for the most part, I'm a socialist, in the truest sense of the word. I care about society as a whole, and want to see it bettered for all.

I remember a saying I used to have when I tried to describe what went wrong in one of my previous relationships. I said that I spent the past year digging in the dirt, filling sandbags to keep the dam from breaking, only to look up at the end of that time and see that I was the only one with a shovel. Sometimes I feel that way about things now. Obviously I'm not the only one with a shovel in the world. But I do feel outnumbered. I do feel as though there are far more people sitting back in their Barcaloungers with a bag of Funyuns, waiting for the show that TV guide promises will be the best representation of the Apocalypse yet.

I will not give up the fight, though. I will continue to bring joy and happiness to those around me. I will continue to work hard, play hard, live hard. As is printed on one of my favorite T-shirts: "I will not tiptoe through life, only to arrive safely at death".

We all have a choice, every day. It's always the same, every day. We can choose to do good, to live well, to help those around us. Or we can choose the easy path, that well worn road of apathy, indifference, and callousness.

As Robert Frost put it best:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

May we all take that less traveled path. May we all work towards the common good, and the common health and well-being of our peers.