Mental Timelines

When you picture your life, do have a timeline in your head? I do, but I’ve learned that some people don’t. During my three-year stint teaching sixth-grade Sunday school, I devoted considerable time drawing timelines on the chalkboard, attempting to place historical events in their proper context.  I had always thought that mental timelines were a natural part of people’s imaginations.  To me, being able to picture a timeline is an essential element to my being: it helps me visualize my own history in particular, but I can also visualize years prior to my existence.  If you say 1960 to me, I don’t have loads of information at my fingertips, but I immediately visualize Kennedy vs. Nixon, Psycho, The Apartment, and my parents’ first date.  Fast forward to, say, 1974, and I can tell you much more:

My first-grade class with Mrs. Davis at Marcy School
Nixon’s resignation
The Godfather Part II
The Conversation
Henry Aaron’s record-breaking home run
The third Oakland A’s Word Series victory in a row (over which team?  The Reds?  The Mets?)
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis
Relayer by Yes
Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne
Get Your Wings by Aerosmith
It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll by The Rolling Stones
Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan
Crime of the Century by Supertramp

I was only six years old in 1974, and while my timeline is unbalanced toward pop culture, I’m happy to have some sense of what was happening at the time.

Back when I drew timelines for my students, I would first try to anchor things in the context of seminal events.  For example, I’d ask them to approximate when the Civil War took place and I’d get a myriad of responses, most of them way off the mark.  I’d get an answer like the 1950s, and I’d say, “Okay, so I was born in 1968, and my parents were both born in the 1930s.  Do you think the Civil War took place just fifteen years before I was born and during my parents’ childhoods?”  They’d answer no, and gradually we’d come up with a better guess, if not entirely accurate. 

Not everyone may share the mental timeline that I can recall, though I imagine that many people could develop their own with some guidance.  When my children were young I purchased a large roll of blank white paper that I laid out on the floor and – after drawing a long line – marked the years of their family members’ birthdays, the years when movies they love were released, when various wars occurred, when the Packers Super Bowl victories took place, etc.  I hope this had some impact on their own understanding of their place in the world. 

But while I’ve always known on an intellectual level that people are different – that we all have strengths and weaknesses – it’s one thing to know this and quite another thing to stop yourself, apply the lesson and really consider others’ experiences.  I may have a decent mental timeline, but someone like the actress Marilu Henner has a condition called hyperthymesia that allows her to remember life experiences to in fine detail and with great accuracy.  According to Wikipedia, only around 60 people worldwide are thought to have this gift.  I would LOVE to have this condition, but I imagine that Marilu had to learn early on that not everyone has her ability to recall whether it was Mother’s Day in 1971 or in 1972 that temperatures plummeted and her family’s outdoor party needed to be brought indoors.  She would know this, and she may have as a young person wondered how her fellow family members could be so daft.

I would be lost without my mental timeline, just as Marilu Henner would be lost without her amazing gift, but other people have their own strengths and may wonder how others live without them.

And all this comes back to the lesson we’ve all learned multiple times but perhaps need reminding of from time to time: not to judge people, but to try to understand them.  I’ve come to learn that the people who don’t say hi to me on the street when I pass them maybe aren’t being rude, but may be absolutely terrified of social interaction.  They could also just be rude, but it does no good to assume so. Six years ago I wrote a comparison of the movies St. Vincent and The Fisher King, and concluded that “it doesn’t hurt to assume the best in people, and it could even do a lot of good.  And as contrived as this message may be, this is exactly the default setting we should be employing in our lives.”

I personally need to be reminded of this adage all the time. Fortunately, when it comes to remembering dates, I don’t need the same guidance.

A Lesson from St. Vincent and The Fisher King

** SPOILER ALERT *** If you haven’t seen these two movies, consider reading this essay after you do.

Watching Bill Murray’s film St. Vincent last week, I was reminded of another movie: The Fisher King, starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams.  Both the 1991 and 2014 releases are similar, not just because they’re manipulative and contrived, but because they could potentially lead one to view the more downtrodden among us differently.  How?  Well, that depends on how you look at things.  For some, the movies might invoke a spirited response similar to that of Christopher Tookey, who wrote of the Fisher King:

"The sagacity of the saga is diminished by screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's naively sentimental approach to homelessness and insanity.  Madness in this film can be cured just by knowing that someone cares about you, and homelessness is not a social problem, but a picturesque way that individuals have of coping with personal tragedy.”

Whereas Tookey feared people could stop viewing homelessness as a real problem, I remember walking away from The Fisher King with a more positive thought:  that its tale of a personal tragedy might lead people to view homeless in a more humane way, concluding that perhaps it wasn’t drug use, crime, or other poor choices that led their downfall, but rather a terrible event over which they had no control.

Never mind that generalizing a film’s depiction of a fictional character as a universal truth is unfair to a medium that’s primary purpose is to entertain.  After all, just because Robin Williams’s character suffered a horrendous tragedy doesn’t mean all homeless people have.  But it might be a positive step when we’re confronted with, say, a panhandler, to help use the movie as an example, and consider that this person asking for money may once have been living a full and rich life only to have a tragedy propel them downward (of course, you could argue that it shouldn’t matter one way or the other.  A person in need is a person in need, no matter what led to their circumstances).

St. Vincent walks a similar line to that of The Fisher King.  Its egregiously manipulative screenplay has the main character – who’s been a complete ass for most of the film – conveniently throw out the remnants of his nobler past just as a neighborhood kid watches through a window, thus casting the curmudgeon in a new light.  Like The Fisher King, this film seems to shout out, “Don’t judge a person too harshly – you don’t know what he’s been through.”

And as contrived as this message may be, this is exactly the default setting we should be employing in our lives.  When someone cuts us off on the highway, treats us inconsiderately at the cash register or demeans us at the doctor’s office, it’s easy for us to conclude that the person we’re dealing with is simply a low-life asshole who thinks of nothing but himself.  And you know what?  The easy conclusion may actually be right on the mark. 

But aren’t we much better served by assuming that the person who’s cut us off on the highway is in a terrible hurry because he just found out his spouse has cancer, or the inconsiderate cashier just discovered she can’t pay this month’s rent, or the demeaning physician just had to tell a patient that he’s dying.  Unlikely scenarios, perhaps, but possible, just like it’s possible the homeless person you encountered lost his wife in an unspeakably horrific way, and it’s possible that the cranky neighbor who everyone dislikes is a war veteran who’s been taking care of his wife with dementia for years.

It doesn’t hurt to assume the best in people, and it could even do a lot of good.  As Atticus Finch said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”  It’s a difficult ideal to live up to, but it’s certainly one to aspire to, and movies like St. Vincent and The Fisher King are helpful – if a bit melodramatic – reminders if that ideal.