I recently watched a French biopic called Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and it was one of the most hauntingly beautiful films I have ever seen. The film tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a 43-year-old successful French journalist who suffers a massive stroke and awakes from a coma three weeks later, only to find out he is paralyzed from the head down. He has “locked-in syndrome” or pseudocoma, a rare condition in which the damage in his brainstem leaves him cognitively intact, but he cannot have any voluntary movement. He breathes through a tracheostomy; he cannot speak, eat, walk, or move. The only thing he could do is blink his left eye. He appears to be like someone in a vegetative state, except he is fully aware and conscious. Feeling imprisoned by his body, he starts to see himself as someone in an old-fashioned diving suit with a brass helmet, hence the title “Diving Bell.” But Jean finds freedom through his imagination and in his imagination, he states, “My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly.”
Losing control of almost all the parts of his body except his left eye, Jean amazingly learns to communicate by blinking his left eye. Soon his therapists, who he refers to as his guardian angels, assist him with writing a memoir, something he has always wanted to do. With the blink of his left eye, he directed the therapists to the letters of the alphabet, and soon he formed words and sentences. Finally, with over 200,000 blinks, he completes his memoir and publishes it. Unfortunately, at 44, he passed two days after his book was published. This film was adapted from his memoir.
After watching the film, I started to think about how we might feel imprisoned and create prisons for ourselves without having locked-in syndrome. But as opposed to Jean Bauby, who felt imprisoned by his body, we are imprisoned by our thoughts. These thoughts often tell us stories about ourselves, affecting how we think and feel about ourselves and how we view and experience our lives and the world around us.
We say words like, “I don’t know how to get out of it, or I don’t know how to stop it.” Sometimes these voices say, “You can’t do it. Who do you think you are?
Often, we are unconscious of these thoughts, and a challenging life situation might bring us awareness of them. We learn about them through self-destructive behaviors such as addiction to alcohol or drugs, staying in a toxic career or a relationship that we know no longer serves us, or when enveloped in anger, jealousy, resentment, or deep sadness.
As we go through these challenging situations, we may blame ourselves or others for how we feel. We might feel victimized by our circumstances and feel there is no way out. Feeling distressed, we forget that we always have the choice to change our thoughts and feelings and that we could leave or change the current predicament that we are in.
The first step to re-owning our power of choice in our lives is by becoming aware. We become more self-aware of our current situation by questioning how we got there. If we realize we might have made a mistake along this self-questioning and investigation, accept and acknowledge it. Finding a solution to the current situation will not happen while in a state of self-blame or blaming others. We confirm our power when we take responsibility for our thoughts and actions in creating our reality. We begin to see we CAN change how we feel and think and then come up with solutions or a way out of our pain or challenge from this feeling of having the power of choice.
Breaking our mental prisons is not an easy task. It takes a lot of work and commitment to want to create or change a challenging situation. First, it takes tremendous humility and courage to see and accept where we are and how we got there. In addition, deep anger and pain may resurface from old wounds because we may find that these mental prisons stem from our childhood experiences, longstanding family beliefs, or religious upbringing, and we will need to forgive others along the way. Thus asking for support and help from a therapist or mentor and connecting with a community where you feel supported is essential when the work feels too heavy. A spiritual practice such as meditation or prayer also helps, as daily spiritual practice relieves stress, calms our emotions, and connects us to that deeper loving part of ourselves that we cannot easily access while immersed in our daily tasks. Meditation or prayer also connects us to something outside ourselves; some call it God, or the Divine, that provides a sense of strength and hope, and for some guidance.
What Jean Bauby accomplished seems almost impossible. But he showed us that, as humans, we are totally capable of doing what seems impossible. And we are capable because we always have the power of choice in every waking moment of our lives. So, knowing you have this capability and power, what would you like to see differently in your life? What do you need to do to get there?
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