* * *
Dr. Paul Jenkins (the author of Pathological Positivity, as I mentioned earlier) received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1995 and has been in private practice ever since. Walking into the building that houses his office, I see that his door is slightly ajar and decide I’ll just poke my head in and see if he’s ready. Dr. Paul looks up with a broad smile. He’s athletic and tan, like most people who make the most of life in the high-altitude sunshine here in Utah. He immediately invites me into his office. It’s nothing extravagant or over the top, just comfortable and simple.
When I ask about the difference between traditional therapy and the positive psychology he practices, he gives me a long explanation, which in my head boils down to a glass-half-full sort of take on things. Instead of exploring the darkest episodes of life, he looks at the mental health spectrum with pathology and treatment on the left—“the sick end”—mental health in the middle, and the goal—“to be truly fit and thriving”—on the right.
“Basically,” he says, “I have taken my practice from the left side of the spectrum to the right, and there’s some overlap in the middle because everybody’s got issues. I think many forms of depression, anxiety, relationship conflicts, or challenges that people face in life—that’s the middle of the spectrum. I don’t think that means that you’re broken. Probably it means that you’re human. Welcome to Earth.”
As the hour unfolds, talking and chatting is so easy that I realize we are almost out of time and I’ve hardly touched on the questions in my notes.
“If it’s not too personal: What have been some moments in your life when you have helped yourself with positive psychology?”
He considers it for a moment and says, “I got into a few investments that all hit south at the same time. I ended up filing for bankruptcy. It was hard for me to even admit that for a while, because I used to think people who go through a bankruptcy are either flakes or dishonest, or there’s something wrong with their character. At the lowest point, I was walking out of the courtroom. I looked around, and the thing that surprised me the most was that everything was still in color. Somehow I expected it to be like one of those old 1920s movies where everything’s black-and-white and people are very somber. No, everything is still in color. The breeze is blowing, the children are out playing, the world kept revolving. A good friend said to me, ‘Paul, the troops aren’t coming. We are the troops.’ She might as well have kicked me. It’s like I’m curled up in a fetal position in the corner saying, ‘Well, when the economy changes’ or ‘After those people pay me back,’ I’ll be happy then. I’ll be okay. When my friend said, ‘The troops aren’t coming,’ I realized the only way out of this was to stand up, to get up and to go do something. To take my life back and live on purpose.”
I check my digital recorder to make sure I’m getting all this. I’m not sure I’ve even been interviewing Dr. Paul. His mind seems to jump to the answers before I can ask the questions.
“There’s a line from the movie The Shawshank Redemption,” he says just before I leave. “‘Get busy living or get busy dying.’ What if you were to choose? Intentionally. Steer in that direction.” Dr. Paul laughs and opens his hands. “I don’t know if that answers your question. I’ve got a Ph.D., Elizabeth. That stands for ‘doctor of philosophy.’ So I like to philosophize a lot. If you put a nickel in me, I’ll run forever.”
* * *
As I drive home, that line from the movie—Get busy living or get busy dying—makes me think of Alec Unsicker’s family, who are so actively in the get busy living camp. My family is like that too.
Shortly after I was rescued, my family was invited to spend a week in the Dominican Republic at a resort called “Casa de Campo”—probably the nicest resort I have ever been to. We went deep-sea fishing, and all of us got seasick and puked our guts up over the side of the boat. (No, we didn’t catch anything.) We went horseback riding on the beach on retired polo horses. We stayed in someone’s home, and they had a butler and maids to prepare all the meals and do all the cleaning. Along with the house and staff, there were two golf carts assigned to us to get around in.
The whole trip was highly memorable, but the most memorable part for me and my brothers was the golf carts. I still get teased about this today. Maybe it was because I was approaching my sixteenth birthday and would soon be getting my driver’s license or simply because I had never driven a golf cart before, but my brothers and I spent more time in the golf carts than at the beach or pool. On one of the sunshine-filled days, my brother Andrew and I switched carts partway through our driving adventure. When we finally decided to go back, my cart wasn’t running quite as smoothly. I think maybe the batteries were running low or the fuel tank was almost empty. For whatever reason, I thought I had switched the cart into reverse, but I hadn’t. I slammed my foot down on the accelerator (we may or may not have been racing back), and what do you know—I ran straight into a rock wall.
Andrew and I hurried back to the house we were staying at and pretended that we hadn’t done anything wrong, even though there was some damage to the front of the cart. Apparently they have a lot of security cameras set up at the resort, because less than ten minutes later, resort security guards showed up and started questioning my parents about the damage to the golf cart. And then they questioned Andrew because that was the cart he had been driving before we switched. It looked like Andrew was going to be in trouble, especially since he was really too young to drive the carts around.
But it was my fault, and I needed to take responsibility. I gathered my courage and said, “I’m sorry. It was me who crashed the cart. I thought I had put it in reverse, but I had it in natural, so instead of going backwards, I crashed into the stone wall.”
My parents looked at me for a minute and then they started laughing, “I didn’t know that you could put a cart in natural. Do you mean you put it in neutral?”
Natural, neutral, who cares? I was trying to take responsibility for what I had done and make sure my brother wasn’t in trouble for my actions. The accident was soon forgotten, but even to this day, I am still given a hard time for saying “natural.” Whenever my brothers are in the car with me now and I get distracted for a second, they will slip the car into neutral and then when I press the accelerator, the engine just revs. Then they laugh and say, “Ha-ha! Look, Elizabeth, the car is in natural.”
This is just a silly and slightly obnoxious experience—a slight detour from the topic—but for better or worse, it still makes me laugh. I suppose that when I tell this story to my kids someday, I’ll spin it as a teachable moment—how we need to take responsibility for our actions or whatever—but the real point is that I learned from it. These are the moments that make up a life. And it’s in the context of life as a whole that we learn from any experience, no matter how silly it is. Or how devastating.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gift from the Sea: “I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”
Winding down the mountain road on my way home from the Unsicker’s home, it strikes me that all these conversations are beginning to come together in the most unexpected ways. I feel privileged to be part of it all. I think of what the Unsickers have found in New Zealand, what Dr. Paul found on the way out of bankruptcy court, and what my parents knew when they held me in their arms after being called again and again to look at the remains of murdered girls who never made it home.
Sometimes we just need to ask ourselves: If today were my last day, would I be happy with how I lived it?
Was today worth living over again?
What am I going to do differently tomorrow?
What am I doing to “live on purpose”?
12
The Myth versus the Reality of Happily Ever After
Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is
supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is.
—MANDY HALE
Chloé is the embodiment of my “happily ever after.” The moment she and I arrive at my parents’ home, she beelines it straight to the dress-up box, where she proceeds to take off all her clothes, drape a necklace of plastic beads around her neck, and find the plastic high-heeled “oosh” shoes. My dad comes to give her a big hug and a kiss, but she objects. She loves hugs and kisses but doesn’t like anyone getting in the way of what she wants to do at any given moment.
There’s something extra special about my dad. Maybe it’s the twinkle in his eye when he first sees you, or the extra squeeze he gives in his hugs. There’s not a hard edge about him, but he’s not a pushover. He’s strong enough to hold the line, and he’d do anything for his kids. There’s just something there that always makes you know that he loves you. We sit down across from each other. Chloé, of course, is prancing around in her plastic high heels, continually checking in on everyone to make sure she is not missing out on anything fun or interesting.
“Dad, do you believe in happily ever after?”
“You bet I do,” he says. “I’ll never forget the day you were rescued. I had returned to our home with the rest of the kids while you and Mom went to the hospital to be checked out. Well, there was an absolute sea of media on our street. It was so packed, you couldn’t see the ground. The news reporters were all motioning to me to come out and make a comment. As I walked down the front stairs outside our home, I couldn’t help but think of all the parents we had met during the past nine months who had children missing, and how they would give anything to have their child come home. I almost felt guilty. How were we so lucky to have you come home?”
“Did that day start out any different from any other?”
“No, it didn’t. It was already stressful, because one of my brothers had made a derogatory comment to the news, and it had been printed on the front page of the newspaper. It was supposed to be an ‘off-the-record’ comment, but he really should have known better because he worked in the media himself, and there is no such thing as an ‘off-the-record’ comment. Anyway, we got a phone call. Mom answered it, and it was Detective Cordon Parks. He asked to speak with me. When I answered, he told me I needed to come as quickly as I could down to the Sandy police station and that was all.
“Your mom didn’t come with me. We didn’t know what they’d called us for, but we always tried to not get our hopes up too high, because it was always so devastating when it wasn’t you. When it was just some bones or a burned body, we were always so down. We had to protect ourselves by not allowing ourselves to be too hopeful anytime the police called. On the way down there, our family friend and PR guy Chris Thomas called and asked where I was. I was supposed to be at a press conference. I told him I had been asked to come as quickly as possible down to the police station. I actually thought maybe I was going to identify a body. Chris hung up and then called me back a few minutes later. He had a friend that worked in the Sandy police station who told him, ‘They think they found Elizabeth.’ Chris relayed the message to me. I’m not sure if it was nerves or the fact that all those buildings look the same, but I was having a hard time actually finding the station. Someone in the parking lot said, ‘Mr. Smart, you’re looking for the police station, and it’s just on the other side.’
“When I walked in the front door, I was surprised to find about twelve police officers standing at attention. When I walked by them, they all said something like, ‘God bless you,’ ‘I hope everything works out,’ ‘Good luck,’ et cetera. When I got to the end of the hallway, I turned right, and there was Detective Parks waiting. He said, ‘I think we found Elizabeth. Alive.’ At that point, I was standing outside of a yellow door that had a small window with the metal wire crisscrossing through the glass. When I opened the door, I saw a young woman sitting there with her arms folded. Her hair was braided, and her face was badly sunburned and swollen. It was hard to reconcile the fact that this was you and that you had physically changed so much in only nine months. I remember you didn’t react until I ran up to you, gave you a hug, held you back, and said, ‘Elizabeth, is it really you?’ That really was the beginning of our happily ever after.”
My dad’s memory and my memory of that day are similar and yet completely different. For me, my moment of knowing everything was going to be okay was him hugging me, but what was his moment? I ask, “Dad, at what point did you finally breathe again?”
“I think it was when we finally got you home. It was like we could finally be a family again and find some happiness. Find the relationships that we used to have.”
“Did you worry that we wouldn’t?”
“Once you were found, no, but I didn’t want you to relive the whole nightmare. I just felt, When does this crap leave center stage? And when can we resume our old normal?”
“So, Dad, what do you think of happily ever after?”
“I think life is full of challenges,” he says, “just like with ‘Cinderella,’ where things are happy, and the rescue has happened, and it says happily ever after, which is supposed to indicate that life is just a bowl full of cherries after. Life is full of challenges. So is life happy? Absolutely. Forever? No.”
Chloé stomps over in her plastic high heels with a grape in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. She pats my knee, saying, “Mama, Mama, Mama.” I pull her into my arms, fully aware that I am living my happily ever after. Now is our moment.
* * *
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” These are perhaps the most memorable lines in The Princess Bride. (Speaking of fairy tales that have their share of thorny patches.) Montoya spends twenty-plus years of his life in pursuit of the six-fingered man who killed his father. He’s driven by revenge to become a master swordsman, an assassin. Due to Montoya’s thirst for revenge, he misses so much of life. Ultimately, he does get his revenge upon the six-fingered man and rides away with his friends to the unknown future. The actor who played Montoya is Mandy Patinkin.
Mandy does have some similarities to his character in The Princess Bride. He has become a master of his trade: film, theater, television, singing—he’s what you would call the “whole package.” He sings, duels, and dances onstage and in the movies and performs heart surgery and fights terrorism on TV, but it’s everything he is in real life that made me want to ask him about the concepts of hope and happily ever after. Mandy is also passionate about the things that are important to him. He cares deeply for his family, and he’s overcome huge obstacles in his life, including a degenerative eye disease that required two corneal transplants. In 2004, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and in 2005, he and his son celebrated his first year of survivorship with a 265-mile bike ride for charity, the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride, the purpose of which is “Cycling for Peace, Partnership & Environmental Protection.”
His presence is so big and joyful, most people don’t know about the dark times he’s gone through. And because he does good very quietly, most people aren’t aware that Mandy is a huge humanitarian who has spent countless hours working with refugees. He carried people ashore in Greece as they were trying to escape the terrors of their native country.
I was very nervous to approach Mandy, even though we were sitting right next to each other at dinner. I didn’t want to be one of “those” people who somehow seem to suck all the energy out of you, but I finally decided I was going to talk to him. I figured, What’s the worst that could happen? He doesn’t answer or asks not to be bothered or moves away? That would have surprised me; he didn’t strike me as one of those celebrities who reacts that way. As I debated when and how best to ask him for an interview, I watched him interact with the other people sitting at the table. Polite, charming, and willing to speak to everyone who asked him questions. He, in my mind, is what a celebrity is. Not me. But when he got up to speak, he surprised me by talking quite passionately about me and about the
mission of young people in the world.
When he sat back down, I mustered the courage to say, “Mandy, I’m working on a book about hope and healing. Do you think I could talk about it with you sometime in the future?”
“I would be happy to talk with you, Elizabeth,” he said. “Anything to help you.” And he smiled that Princess Bride smile.
So much for worrying about rejection. Mandy couldn’t have been nicer. We arranged a phone interview.
When the day finally arrives, I dial Mandy’s number, and Mandy quickly answers.
“How are you doing?” he asks me before I can ask him.
“Fine, thank you. How are you? Is this still an okay time to talk?”
“I’m driving to my place in the country,” he says. “Do you mind if I put you on speaker?”
Of course I don’t mind. I’m just happy to be talking to him, taking in this bighearted energy he gives off. “You are so busy; you perform in all areas of acting. Why is it important to you to then add to your load and engage in humanitarian work?”
“I’ve always tried to participate in humanitarian causes,” he tells me, “particularly in the Middle East. I hope in optimism, and in my heart, I know that one day things will shift for the better. It is difficult, but in the meantime, I follow the precepts of my religion, which is Tikkun Olam—which means ‘to repair the world.’ It’s our privilege and duty as citizens of this world to speak for those who have no voice. That’s my job as a human being.”
His religion, I’ve read, is what he calls “JewBu”; he’s Jewish “with a dash of Buddhist belief.” I make a note to research Tikkun Olam, but just Mandy’s definition of it—to repair the world—makes me think of Angeline and Alec and all the people who’ve demonstrated an amazing ability to translate their hope into action that helps others.
“Mandy, when your cancer was first in remission and you took a 265-mile charity bike ride—I just wonder what that was for you. Was it, in some way, to prove to yourself that you were bigger than cancer?”
Where There's Hope Page 22