The Secret of Life

by Bob Brill

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

It was Friday morning, the day of my weekly session with my analyst. “So here’s what I suggest,” said my analyst, who was not a short rotund psychiatrist, but a tall thin one with sunken cheeks and silky gray hair. “I want to start you on a program for overcoming your fears. Come with me.”

We passed through a door in his office into a humid locker room where he handed me a bathing suit and instructed me to hang my clothes in a locker and don the suit. I felt uneasy and untrusting, but I obeyed him. After all, he cost me a good deal of money. It would be a great waste if I refused his advice.

On the floor of the locker I saw a folded piece of yellow paper. I knew that paper held an important message for me. I felt the tickle of a memory. I almost had it, but it slipped away. As I reached for the paper, my analyst said, “Never mind that. Close the locker and follow me.”

He led me through another door and there before me was a huge public swimming pool. A troop of lovely young girls were cavorting in the water. The place was filled with echoing shouts, laughter, splashing, and the smell of chlorine, which brought back childhood memories of acute discomfort.

You are going to impress these ladies with your diving skill. You’ll start on the low board.” He indicated a diving board which extended over the pool a scant three feet above the water. It looked easy. I climbed the few steps to the board, raced forward, bounced off the end and splashed into the water. I climbed out of the pool and returned to my analyst, feeling like a spaniel retrieving a stick.

“Do that a few more times until you’re entirely comfortable with it.” I noticed that I had attracted the attention of some of the girls. This encouraged me to try trickier dives.

“Now you are ready to advance to the three meter board,” my analyst said. “Little by little you will achieve greater height and greater confidence.”

I looked up at the three-meter board. It didn’t look so high, only a few feet over my head. When I climbed up to the board, walked out to the end and looked down, the water appeared to be much further away. That was reasonable. The distance between my eyes and the board was now added to the total height, but still I was nervous.

My analyst called up to me, “Just jump off feet first a few times to get used to it.” I hesitated, saw that the girls had lost interest in my actions. I took a deep breath to calm myself, exhaled, and jumped feet first into the water. As I came to the surface I felt exhilarated. I had actually done it. Jumped off the three-meter board. I ran around to the ladder, climbed up and did it again.

“Now try a dive.”

“Okay, I can do it. I know I can do it. I think I can do it.” I stood on the end of the board, raised my arms above my head, and paused. The girls were watching me now. “Okay,” I cried, “here I come.” I tilted forward and plunged head first into the water. It was scary, it was sloppy, but I did it and felt a rush of excitement. I made the plunge three more times, each time a bit more gracefully.

“That’s good, that’s very good. Do you feel ready to advance to the six-meter board?”

I looked up and saw diving boards at various levels stretching high up toward a distant ceiling. A young Adonis was parading his muscles on the six-meter board, bouncing up and down on the end of it, presumably testing the spring of the board, but at the same time showing that he had no fear of falling off. He walked gracefully back to the other end of the board, turned and paused, then made a run down the board, sprang off and did a double somersault in the air before slicing into the water without a splash. The girls all rushed to greet him as he came to the surface.

I’m going to have to top that, I said to myself. But if I go one board higher, he’ll go two boards higher and then we’ll be one-upping each other, a contest I’ll probably lose. So, I’ll go straight to the highest board. If I can jump off that, even once, even feet first, he can’t beat me.

I found out there was an elevator to the sixty-meter board. That’s the height of a seventeen-story building. My analyst advised against it. “You’re not ready,” he said. “You need to build up to it.”

“I’m going for it,” I replied, stepping into the elevator. “I’m not going to let that guy cut me out of the action. The man who leaps off the highest board will have his pick of the women, and that’s going to be me.” Before my analyst could get in another word, I pressed the up button and the door closed.

I stepped out of the elevator onto a tiny platform. There wasn’t a board, just a short walk to the edge. I looked down. The pool was so far away it looked like a damp washcloth. I could barely make out the girls. They were streaking for the sides of the pool and climbing out. I took a step back. Maybe Dr. Frumple was right. This was crazy. This was suicide. Not that I hadn’t ever considered suicide, but I would never do it like this. I would take the coward’s way, sleeping pills.

Now I was committed. I couldn’t very well take the elevator down. That would be an unbearable defeat. I took a step forward to the edge of the platform. My legs trembled so much I could barely stand. My heart pumped so hard I couldn’t breathe and I started to black out. I changed my mind and decided to chicken out, but it was too late. I was falling.

I opened my eyes and saw that there was no pool below. I was descending toward a busy intersection. Cars, buses, traffic lights, pedestrians. As this horrific scene drew closer a seam appeared across the intersection, a crack that grew wider as I approached. All traffic stopped as the two halves of the street separated and into this widening gap I plunged. I could see nothing as I accelerated in the darkness. Then I felt a force like a giant clam snapping shut on my legs. My body wanted to float up, but the clam thing pulled me down and spun me around till I woke up, my legs squeezed in the tight grip of the twisted blankets.

It was Wednesday, the day I was to start with my new analyst. I decided I no longer wanted to struggle with overcoming my fear. I found a new analyst who championed the concept of self-acceptance. That’s what I wanted. To accept myself for who I was and to make the most of it.

Dr. Freeman was brisk, dapper, informal. “Have a seat. Want to lie down? I don’t have a couch. You can lie on the floor. Some of my patients who are refugees from Freudian analysis still feel the need to lie down.”

“I’m done with all that,” I said.

“Good. Take a seat. How about some coffee?”

He got right to the heart of the matter. “You’re okay. Fear is normal. Everybody feels it. It serves a purpose. It protects you from danger. Just feel it, recognize it, acknowledge it, and use it.”

I countered that my fear was often instrumental in causing the thing I feared to come to pass.

“Okay,” he said. “That happens. Remain alert to its presence. Learn to tell the difference between the good fear and the bad fear. When you’ve got the dysfunctional kind, just notice it. The important thing is to be in touch with your feelings at all times.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Right. Of course. That’s your homework. Come back next week. We’ll see how you’re doing.”

At the end of the session I walked out feeling liberated. No more diving boards. No more testing my limits. I would just go on being a coward, but with this difference. I would be a coward, not only in practice, but in principle.

Paradoxically, this decision gave me courage. There was a certain woman of my acquaintance whom I had long admired from a distance. I called her up and asked her for a date. To my astonishment she said yes. It was only after I hung up that I felt a great surge of anxiety.

We dined at a riverside restaurant in the open air, on a spacious dock with colored lights strung overhead and candles on the tables. We sat near the water’s edge, watching the boats coming and going and the reflections of lights in the rippling water. She told me she was surprised, but pleased, to hear from me, that she had always been curious about me and was glad I called. We lifted our wine glasses and clinked them together in an unspoken toast which held the promise of delights to come.

I looked down and saw a folded piece of yellow paper near my feet. I knew then that I was dreaming. That same piece of folded paper had appeared in my dreams before. Sometimes its significance eluded me, but I remembered now that on that paper was written the secret of life.

In one dream I was looking for a packet of old letters in an attic and, upon opening a wooden chest, I found the piece of yellow paper. When I unfolded it and read its message I was filled with sudden understanding. All the questions I’d ever asked were answered at once, as well as the ones I hadn’t asked. And yet it was all so simple, so obvious. Just a few words on a piece of paper that unlocked all the mysteries of the ages. Another time when I turned the page of a book I was reading, the paper fell into my lap.

Another time it blew in through a window where I stood watching the sunset. Each time brought this tremendous revelation. But on awakening, I could never remember what was written on the paper.

I always kept a pad of paper and a pen by my bedside in case I woke up in the night with any good ideas. I never did. The pad was still untouched. But now I knew what to do. As soon as I read the message on the yellow paper, I would force myself awake and write down the words that were revealed to me.

I reached down for the slip of yellow paper just as a passing waiter stepped on it. He headed for the kitchen with the paper stuck to his shoe. Without a word to my date, I jumped up and ran after him. In the kitchen cooks and waiters were busy working among the steaming pots. I passed through a back door onto a section of dock loaded with lobster pots and empty cartons. The waiter was sitting on a bench, lighting a cigarette.

“Excuse me,” I said. “There’s a piece of paper stuck to your shoe.”

“So?”

“That paper is mine. I want it.”

He looked up at me with weary eyes. He blew out a stream of smoke and his shoulders slumped. “I’m tired,” was all he said.

“If you would just lift your foot for a second, I’ll take my paper and won’t bother you any further.”

He looked down at his shoe. “This job is killing me,” he said. “I only get a five-minute break.”

“Please,” I said.

With his heel still planted on the dock, he lifted his toe. I knelt and peeled the paper off his shoe, thanked him and unfolded the paper. He planted his foot on my chest and shoved, sending me off the dock and into the water. I seemed to spend an eternity under the black water, struggling to rise to the surface, but when I did, I still clutched the paper in my hand.

With my free hand I grasped the edge of the dock, caught my breath, swept the wet hair out of my eyes, and read the message. Yes, once again the secret of life was revealed. I brought myself with difficulty out of the dream, reached for the pen and scribbled down the text of the message, before falling back asleep.

I was now lying face down in a canoe, drifting slowly down a river. There was a window in the bottom of the canoe. I could see tall grasses waving gently in the current and silvery darting fishes. It was all so beautiful. Then I felt a woman’s body pressing against my back. She was planting nibbling kisses around my neck as we glided over the water.

Slowly, the scene faded and I lay in my bed, peacefully returning to the waking world. I thought about the mysterious realm of dreams, how my dreams seemed to be speaking to me, but in a secret language, so powerful, so compelling, so varied, so rich, yet so obscure.

Then I remembered that from the depths of my dream I had snatched the secret of life. With sudden excitement I reached for the pad by my bedside. I could barely make out the scribbled marks on the paper. I had written the words: blueberry pancakes.