What The X-Files, oh, and Thoreau, Can Teach Us about Life

by Tom Shafer

October 15, 2018

So, I’m an unabashed fan of the cult sci-fi show The X-Files and when the boob tube disappoints (as it does frequently), I find myself pulling up old episodes On-Demand.  Now, for the uninitiated, The X-Files, a series that aired from 1993 to 2002, then returned (with limited episodes) in 2016, revolves around two FBI special agents who investigate X-Files, unsolved cases that involve paranormal phenomena.  Of course, this one sentence description doesn’t do justice to the show’s engaging running storyline and excellent writing, but I do implore you to view and judge the series for yourselves. 

During one of these X-Files evenings, I focused on a quote from Assistant Director to the FBI Walter Skinner (sometimes friend, sometimes foil to Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully) that I had heard previously, but one that now resonated in ways that it had not before.  Agent Mulder, who had believed Skinner was impeding an investigation into his partner’s near death, now realizes and marvels that Skinner had actually risked his own life to help Mulder.  To this, Skinner responds in his typically stoic fashion, “Every life, every day is in danger.  It’s just life.”

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Over the years, I’ve heard and read many quotations about life, but this one (to me anyway) is perhaps the most pragmatic – and truthful – representation of the struggle between life and death.  Just one snapshot from any town’s evening news provides proof enough for Skinner’s words: a fatal car accident or fire, a community’s effort to help a child dying from cancer, family members swept away in a flash flood, innocent victims of a bombing in another part of the world.  Some are survivors, others are not so lucky.

I think all of us recognize the fragility of life, but maybe not as much as we should.  How often do we hear the cancer survivor say, “I see things differently today.  I know what’s really important now”?  Or the survivor of a fire or natural disaster: “Now that I’ve got a second chance, I’m really going to make the most of this life.”  Unfortunately, the deceased victims of an accident or disaster don’t get the opportunity to make statements like these. 

But why does it take a life-changing catastrophe for some people to realize what life is – and how delicately it dances with death?  How many books, movies, TV series, and songs preach the “live for now” mantra or teach us that love of family and friends is more important than anything?  All religions are centered on the concept that man’s purpose here is to serve his fellow man – of course with divine assistance.  Parents tell their children that money can’t buy happiness, that life is short – make the most of it.

So what is getting in the way?  Where are these messages getting lost in translation?  I think the culprit is life itself.  Any of you who have mapped out a vacation know how this story ends.  You plot out the destinations and activities, complete all of the necessary reservations, organize and pack all of the essentials for the trip – and off you go.  You are excited, ready for fun and adventure, and determined that nothing will interfere or get in the way of your good time.  Then it happens: a flat tire or car trouble, illness or injury, disappointment or frustration, bad accommodations or hospitality.  Before you know it, your vacation has been waylaid, and significant adjustments and modifications have to be made.  What had been so thoroughly – even lovingly – organized and arranged has changed, and the vacation of your dreams doesn’t remotely resemble the reality of the vacation you are surviving.

Life works this very way.  We can map out our lives in great detail (education or career preparation, relationships and family planning, establishing a home in a welcoming community), but we can’t chart those life interrupters: bad decisions, career disruption, illness or injury to family (including parents), relationship issues, and residential woes.  Early life idealism is infected by crass realism and slowly over time, cynicism replaces that idealism.  Now, instead of living and experiencing life, you are plodding along a life-like path, a zombie relegated to waking up, laboring at a job you despise, resenting a family you once cherished, finding little joy in day-to-day living.

Maybe your life doesn’t get quite this bad.  But take a moment to examine the life you have lived: does that early idyllic vision of your life mirror the one you are living?  Do you recognize that zombie plodding along a “life-like” path?  Have you made those necessary adjustments and found contentment with where you are now?  Or, are you one of the fortunate few who have lived the life of your dreams?

Somewhat hidden inside Skinner’s words is another message, an important one for all of us “survivors”: if “every life, every day is in danger,” then we must live that way.  Tomorrow is NOT a given, so we should cherish today and fully embrace the life we are living. 

Anytime a discussion like this arises, the old English teacher comes out in me, and I turn to the Transcendentalists who taught and lived this concept a century and a half ago.  In particular, I turn to H.D. Thoreau, who famously lived in isolation for nearly two years so that he could come to some understanding about the essence and nature of life.  In his writings while living on Walden Pond (the namesake for his collection of essays, Walden) near Concord, Massachusetts, he posited the following observation and advice: “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.”

Sometimes it’s difficult NOT to want more.  The world bombards us with innovative, cutting-edge I-Phones, automobiles, clothing, and other technological gadgets.  Our friends brag about their newest possessions and their happening new digs – or cool places and restaurants they have visited.  They are making impressive tally marks on their life cards – and perhaps you are envious because you are not.  But life is not a tally card.  The events of life don’t make life.  If you want life to be a checklist, that’s easy enough: graduation from high school and college, check; beginning of a new career, check; significant relationship that leads to marriage, check; purchase of your first home, check; birth of children, check.  I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

But life isn’t a checklist.  Life starts with our family members as they nurture and love us unconditionally.  Life happens as we develop friendships and explore intimacy with significant others.  Life occurs in the relationships we build with colleagues in our careers – and in our growth in those careers.  Life deepens as we nurture and rear our children in loving and supportive environments.  Life enriches as we grow old and continue to cultivate and cherish all of those relationships we have sustained.

When I was teaching, my classroom was adorned with lots of visuals (funny posters, historical pictures, copies of famous works of art), as well as significant and thought-provoking quotations by world figures, including yours truly.  I wasn’t just filling wall space with these items.  I hoped my students would peruse the room (when appropriate, and not as I was delivering my typically spectacular oratory) and absorb whatever they happened to select.  One quotation always seemed to elicit more response and question than any other, and fortunately it was one of my own: “Life is best lived in 3D.”  Of course, my more critical students would initiate a quick Internet search to verify my claim, and my smart-alecks wondered aloud what state 3D was in (“Is it anywhere near Timbuktu or Lake Titicaca?”).  But most of my students merely liked it and thought it might be a good motto to live by.  I certainly like to think that some of them took it to heart.

Well, I’ve wandered along here more than I had intended – and maybe got a little too “teachy.”  But examination of one’s life is important from time-to-time.  I once heard Johnny Cash say that he liked to look back at his past so that he was reminded of where he was going.  I like to think that he was stealing back to the idealism that we all have as we are just getting started on this journey of life.  And though Skinner’s words (yep, trying to go full circle here!) seems harsh, it is a reminder that we need to “get busy living, or get busy dying,” a poignant quote attributed to Andy Dufresne from box office failure, but now universally loved, The Shawshank Redemption.  Otherwise, we may get to a point where we are looking back with disappointment and regret – “the two worst words in our language,” as I used to tell my students.  But the walls of my classroom also offered another reason to get living, another quote of mine that students used to like: “Make the world your oyster; if not, someone may soak you in cocktail sauce and eat you.”  Mmmmm.  Now I’m suddenly hungry!