Conscious Choice: A Beautiful Mind of One’s Own

September 2006 | Body & Mind Health

A Beautiful Mind of One’s Own

By Jonn Salovaara

How can I possibly justify a column about a movie that came out five years ago? Well, five years is long enough that you might be ready to watch it on DVD again. Besides that, in the 30 or so reviews that I sampled via Metacritic.com, no one emphasized the point that I want to make about A Beautiful Mind.

My point is that the movie offers us a way of coping with our demons. Demons are the nagging preoccupations that we take along with us even when we go on vacation. They are the “you” implied in “Wherever you go, there you are.” These concerns may vary in magnitude. You have perennial difficulty accepting some little habits of your loved ones. You wish you could change some moments from your past. You deeply regret the election of politicians who seem likely to serve out the full terms of their offices.

I’ll stay away from the easy example (the politicians) and the dangerous example (habits of loved ones) and instead employ a moment from my past as my prime personal test-case. Years ago, when I was a stay-at-home dad, I befriended a stay-at-home mom—let’s call her Rita—whom I met at my daughter’s play group. We took our kids, who were the same age, to parks and museums while our spouses earned more money than we did. After several years of this friendship, Rita and I got into an argument about my, to her, inadequate supervision of her daughter one day when I was taking care of both kids. I responded to her criticism by losing my temper, and I said some things I shouldn’t have said. Despite a subsequent, too-long-delayed apology from me, the friendship never really recovered. I have thought about this moment entirely too often in the years since it occurred.

And now, back to our feature presentation. As you may recall, the partly true basic story of A Beautiful Mind is that a brilliant but schizophrenic mathematician named John Nash learns to deal with his own, really much more scary, demons. His demons are completely imaginary people whom he believes to be real, with whom he converses and interacts for years before undergoing treatment. Ultimately, though, it is not the various psychiatric interventions that help him cope the most. Nor is it the love of his wife, though that is key (reviewers find this notion either too simplistic or else the most important point of the movie). The solution I want to emphasize is his own realization that even though he is not ever going to get rid of the demons, but that he doesn’t have to talk to them.

As I watch the last part of the movie, I keep hoping for some indication that the imaginary demons have finally departed for good. After decades of coping, they are still there, even when Nash goes to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize. But Nash has resolutely vowed not to speak back when they speak to him. What allows him to function, and to become a decent teacher, is his decision not to communicate with the hallucinations.

I suggest that you don’t have to be completely schizophrenic in order to benefit from this strategy. I propose we adopt Nash’s insight. We accept that the demons are there and that they are not going away, but we refuse to talk to them. When I’m tempted to dwell on the Rita fiasco, when regret about that lost friendship threatens to take over my day, I acknowledge the persistence of this memory, I admit that it is part of me, but I refuse to commit my energy to it.

Conscious non-obsession when demons appear can result in a sense of relaxation, as we observe this troublesome mental material but choose not to interact with it. We accept that we don’t expect ever to perfect our consciousness to the point where we eliminate all regrets and annoyances, and we focus on significant aspects of our current lives as much as we can. Maybe that’s as close to beauty as a mind can get.

Jonn Salovaara teaches in the English Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: