Posts Tagged: unreality

“A BEAUTIFUL MIND”

On September 24, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

I had not seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind” before last night.  My twelve-step friends had mentioned it several times, so I finally decided to watch it.  I’m going to yell at my friends after the next meeting.  I ended up with a terrible sinus headache from crying so much.  Thanks a lot, guys!

SPOILER ALERT!  If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m going to spoil it for you, so stop reading right now!

. . .

Okay, you’ve been warned!

So, the movie is loosely based on a true story about a man, John Nash, who is a brilliant mathematician.  He is recruited by the U.S. government to work decoding Russian instructions to sleeper cells in America.  The sleeper cells are planning to detonate nuclear devices.

It starts out at Princeton University, but fairly quickly it turns into a spy thriller.  You realize that this brilliant mathematician is in way over his head.

But eventually, his wife realizes, and we the viewers realize that he is really in over his head in a very different way: Nash has constructed an alternative reality.  He isn’t working for the government.  The people he interacts with aren’t real.  He is, in fact, schizophrenic.

His imaginary people never entirely disappear, but he learns to ignore them.  His wife, against all strict logic, stays with him.  Eventually, he becomes a well-beloved professor, and wins the Nobel Prize.

The real story, like all real stories, is much messier than the Hollywood version, but it is a good movie in my opinion.  And while I’ve never been diagnosed as schizophrenic, I did identify with Nash.  Here’s why.

For years, I have struggled with various addictions.  While there are many useful ways to look at addictions, but perhaps they all boil down to a few simple non-realisms: the desire to be in control and the illusion that I was in control, the desire for pleasure without the pain of commitment, and an extremely skewed image of myself, God, and everyone and everything else.

And, of course, I still hear the voices calling to me.  The difference is that these days, I ignore the voices.  In a sense, we all hear voices.  We need to decide which ones we’ll listen to.

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