A couple months ago I wrote a post about Doctor Who and the state of the world. Essentially, if you’re too lazy to read it, I discussed how watching Doctor Who has changed my perspective on life in a radical way. And since writing that post, I’ve recognized some other things about the show that I wanted to talk about.
Lately, I lost a good friend. He’s not dead, but our friendship apparently is. Don’t ask me who it is, because that’s personal, and don’t ask me why, because I don’t entirely know. It was another Dylan situation, essentially, where someone I trusted decided that they didn’t want to be my friend anymore and so instigated a state of total silence. No answering text messages, emails, or Facebook messages (in fact, he deleted me from Facebook.).
This kind of crap has pulled on me three times, now. Three friggin times. And so over break I kind of had a, well, break down. This happens periodically where everything that upsets me kind of crashes into me at once and I need a day to cry and scream and hyperventilate. It’s like my reboot phase. Anyways. So during my reboot phase over break, I found myself crocheting and watching Doctor Who for a good few hours, as I often do, and pondering the question: “how do I trust people again?”
See, from my perspective, it’s a valid question. In three separate cases, completely unprovoked by me, good friends decided to completely ignore me. No warning. No explanation. Just silence. Cold, hateful silence. And, let me stress again, completely unprovoked. As far as I know (since I’ve yet to get a real explanation from any of them), I’ve done nothing wrong. So with that in mind, I’ll ask it again. “How do I trust people?”
Because anyone could be a Dylan. I didn’t expect it from him or the other two cases. I was good friends with all of them, best friends [temporarily, apparently] with two. I can’t control their actions, so I can’t anticipate this kind of behavior. How, in the name of all things good and pure, can I trust people? How can I open up when I’ve been closed down over and over again?
The lesson most people learn from these experiences is “people can’t be trusted.” Chasing Liberty, anyone? No? Moving on. And that wasn’t a lesson I wanted to learn. And then I thought about my Doctor Who post, and an integral point. “The Doctor absolutely adores humanity, and it’s the reason he spends so much time on Earth. No matter what horrible things they end up doing, the Doctor never loses his faith in them, not completely.”
If anyone should have trust issues, it’s the Doctor. He’s seen the absolute worst of humanity, and yet he loves them still. He soldiers on, no matter how hurt he is. Because in his heart he believes, with absolute certainty, that there will always be good in our world, if you look hard enough.
So again I find myself being pulled back together with this often cheesy but always brilliant science fiction show. Again I find myself looking to the Doctor, a fictional character, for guidance. And again, I find myself mostly whole again.
I love how people seem to think deleting you from Facebook is an official representation of your friendship being over. It’s happened to me too and each time I laugh at that persons immaturity. The thing about trust though, is you can’t truly experience it until you go through heartache… unfortunate as it is. But, that’s what makes that one special person all the more worthwhile.
The reason that the Doctor never loses faith in humanity is because he is the way he is, because of humans. Humanity made the Doctor. I don’t mean in the meta-way, either. It’s cannon for the show. Humans stopped the Doctor, at a crucial moment, from becoming a casual murderer. So he can’t lose faith, not ever, because if it weren’t for his various encounters with humanity, at it’s best and at it’s worst, and everything in-between, he wouldn’t see the Universe in the way that he does. He wouldn’t be the Doctor.
He’s something like… Suppose a smart, rich European teenager, from an old noble family who’s always been rich, with an ivy-league education, great looks, perfect health, perfect teeth; were to go slumming in some 3rd world hell-hole, dressed up as a poor native, in the equivalent of black-face, as a joke, as a lark–and for a while everything really is a joke.
He’s not really living like one of them, of course. He’s secretly living in the best suite in the city, and he’s bribed everyone there, so they’re in on the joke. He’s got constant bodyguards, dressed up like natives too, of course. He’s got several cars, with drivers, that will pick him up any time he wants, and take him to anywhere he likes, 24-7.
And he’s having a great time dressing up like one of these poor dumb peasants, and won’t he have some stories to tell when he gets to the real world?–But then, one day, something happens–it doesn’t matter what it is–but because of it, he looks around, and he realizes that the people around him, the people he’s spending thousands of euros to fool, because it’s funny, people who don’t have ANYTHING, who are struggling, every single day, just to survive, hand-to-mouth; some of them are acting in ways that are just fundamentally, morally, better than everyone else he’s ever met in his life.
They’re kind to one another, just because kindness is all they have to give one another, and they’re kind to him, without any hope for compensation. They help each other, because, even though they desperately want to escape their horrible situations, they’d rather not do so, alone, or on the backs of the others. They’re constantly making choices, and sacrifices, that he can live his whole life and never have to make, not once; and he comes to understand that those decisions, those sacrifices, have more meaning to these people’s lives, than any choice he’s ever made–and, more-so than not, the people here are choosing the harder path, they’re choosing to sacrifice more than is absolutely necessary, because it’s the right thing to do. Not because it will make their lives easier–these are choices that make their own impossible lives that much more impossible–but because it might make the lives of everyone they care about, and everyone that comes after them, better. Someday.
It’s not all of them, of course. There’s people around him who are mean, cold, hard, selfish, small. Ones that have just given up and given in. There’s old women who are murderers, and children who are thieves, but even in them, he sees reflections of the kinder ones. He sees the possibilities. Chances that were lost, and chances that just need to be taken.
There are other people like him down there too, slumming like him, people from back home, and places like home, who aren’t just here for fun. Rich people, and their agents, who want to take over the place, who want to make their profits on the backs of the natives, who want to just enslave them, or exterminate them, so they can build another shining city, like the one he now suddenly realizes he was running away from, so desperately away, all this time.
So, what does he do?
He’s learned how to care, how to be good, how to make the hard, right choices, from us.
He’s only able to do so much, to see so far, to be so good; because he’s standing on the shoulders of giants.
We’re the giants.