By Porter Sprigg
Maybe you wouldn’t think to compare a college senior approaching graduation from a Christian liberal arts school with a lonely, depressed, alcoholic horse, but in my case, the (horse)shoe might just fit. Allow me to explain.
As I procrastinate on my assignments for one last semester, I’ve started watching Netflix’s Bojack Horseman. The show follows a middle-aged horse who was a famous TV star back in the 90’s. As a sitcom actor, he was famous, rich, and convinced that he was happy. Now, he’s alone and his career is going nowhere. He turns to sex, substances, and reruns of his own TV show to try and fill the emptiness inside of him. Interestingly, this show is a comedy, and a hilarious one at that. While it has its fair share of ridiculous situations, goofy puns, and one-liners, this show moves into thoughtful reflection more than any sitcom I’ve watched before. It does a great job of making viewers laugh pointedly at the human tendency to trivialize and avoid deep issues under masks of pleasure. At times my appreciation of the show’s jokes has been paired with a different emotion though, a feeling in my gut. Conviction. More often than I care to admit, when I look at Bojack, I see myself.
In season 1, Bojack has a flashback to when he was a star actor talking to the girl who played his daughter on the show. His advice to the young bright-eyed girl is laughable in its nihilism: “The most important thing is, you got to give the people what they want, even if it kills you, even if it empties you out until there's nothing left to empty. No matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts, you don't stop dancing, and you don't stop smiling, and you give those people what they want.[1]” The episode proceeds to show how this promising young actress became known for her sex-infused music videos and drug abuse, demonstrating the inevitable result of following Bojack’s advice. Bojack is so motivated by the approval of others, that he will empty himself completely for a rush of validation from the public. We see this time and time again in Hollywood, but how often do we see this in ourselves?
It can happen in LA and it can happen in Wenham, MA.
Christian thinker Henri Nouwen writes about the human tendency to depend on one’s personal success for fulfillment. “Underneath all our emphasis on successful action, many of us suffer from deep-seated, low self-esteem and are walking around with the constant fear that someday someone will unmask the illusion and show that we are not as smart, as good, or as lovable as the world was made to believe.”[2] We try to use our busy schedule and our list of accomplishments as a chapstick for our withering self-esteems, terrified that one day if we aren’t careful, it will be discovered that we are not as kind, strong, or self-sufficient as we appear. This is clearly the fear that underlies Bojack’s approach to life, and it’s my fear too. I don’t want people to know how selfish I am, how lazy I am, or how insecure I am. And so for several years, I’ve kept dancing and kept smiling, and kept giving the people what they want.
As a freshman at Gordon College, I hoped to remain low profile. I had been fairly busy in high school and had allowed myself to become very anxious. Hoping to avoid that in college, I wanted to commit to as little as possible as a freshman. I had a great year, getting to perform and serve in an incredible drama ministry and developing lasting friendships in my building. Yet, I felt like I had underused the gifts I’d been given. I entered into sophomore year wanting to do more. As I am wont to do I overcorrected and soon had a schedule that was so full, I would get back to my room with a feeling that was half-despair and half-exhaustion. In addition to all my academic and social commitments, I was an RA who was trying to care for other college students.
Here’s what an average day would look like for me during my second semester as a sophomore.
2 AM: Go to bed after hanging out with my friends in the lounge.
8 AM: Hit snooze but then end up scrolling mindlessly on Facebook or ESPN for twenty minutes
8:20 AM: Shower
8:45 AM: Breakfast with a resident of mine who was dealing with depression.
9:45 AM Honors Class that I did half of the reading for
11:15: Lunch while reading for my next class
12:30: Grabbing a drink with a friend
1:00 PM: English Class
2:30 Check e-mails; respond to a fourth of them
3:00 PM: Intramural Ultimate Frisbee Game
4:00 PM: Do homework
4:30 PM: Calm myself down after panicking about the paper due tomorrow
5:30 PM: Three hour Training for my summer job
8:30 PM: Two hour RA Staff Meeting
10:30 PM: Act in a video for my school’s late night show.
11:45 PM go the lounge to “work on the paper”
Sometimes I would cry when I realized that I had to do it all over again the next day.
A schedule like this isn’t uncommon for a college student, but that doesn’t make it healthy. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the individual activities I was doing and I do think I did some genuinely productive, kind, and creative things that year. However, I was turning a lot of these activities into “worth evaluations” trying to prove that I mattered through pleasing my professors, friends, residents, and the student body. Every laugh I got from an audience gave me adrenaline I craved, confirming that I was important. Every A I got convinced me that maybe I wasn’t a failure. Nouwen addresses this painful cycle.
When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.[3]
It’s this dark power that drives the middle-aged Bojack to drink loads of alcohol anytime he’s reminded of his lonely and irrelevant place as a washed-up actor from an old sitcom. It’s this dark power that has driven me to hours alone in my room on Netflix, on Facebook, or doing things I’m not vulnerable enough to tell you about as I’m reminded of my lonely and irrelevant place as a college senior. Just like that alcoholic horse, I’m afraid and confused about who I am. I’ve allowed my identity to become fused with popularity at a small Christian college, and as that has faded, so has my feeling of happiness. I’m scared that when I graduate, I’ll be forced to find out who I really am. I’m scared I won’t like what I find.
Towards the end of Season 1, Bojack says this: “Sometimes I feel like I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me, and now it's all gone. And I'll never get it back in me. It's too late. Life is a series of closing doors, isn't it?”[4] I feel a tug on my heart that says the same thing. It’s too late for me to recapture purpose or joy. I’ve lost the ability to care for people that I had as a freshman. I berate myself for being lazy and then berate myself for berating myself. The cycle continues on like an ever-flushing, ever-clogged toilet that swirls and swells with crap. Gross, yes, but that’s the point. Self-deprecation sucks. Thank God there’s another tug on my heart that says something else.
Change is possible.
Bojack starts to wonder if change is possible for him after his memoir is released, revealing to the general public how vapid his life actually is. People appreciate the rawness of the book, and Bojack begins to hope that he can become a good person. Maybe that’s why I’m writing this. Maybe I think telling you my struggles will release their power over me. But honestly, I don’t think Bojack has found the answer to healing. Nouwen is the source I’d go to for that.
Nouwen writes that a healing of our self-esteem can come from true solitude, a stepping away from the noise of people, TV, and homework. Only stepping away from a mentality of doing can allow us to re-center and adopt a mentality of being.
In solitude, we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of him who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could give love to anyone. It is in this solitude that we discover that we are worth more than the result of our efforts.[5]
My identity is not tied in any way to how many freshmen know my name, how many people laugh at my jokes, the numbers and letters that will appear on my transcript! My identity is held intact by the person who made me, lived for me, and died for me. We are reminded of this reality when we seek solitude. That solitude, to Nouwen, is actually what forms the basis of healthy Christian community. “As a community of faith, we work hard, but we are not destroyed by the lack of results. And as a community of faith we remind one another constantly that we form a fellowship of the weak, transparent to him who speaks to us in the lonely places of our existence and says: Do not be afraid, you are accepted.”[6] Being weak is acceptable. It is human. May we seek solitude that allows us to hear God’s proclamation of our worth and then seek communities that are honest about weakness.
Ultimately, I think that’s why I’m writing this. Because this is not a Bojack Horseman problem or a Porter Sprigg problem, but a community problem. To the sophomore who is crying at night because they’re doing too much, fight against the voice that is telling you to keep dancing, smiling, and giving the people what they want. Seek solitude. Listen for God’s voice. Say no to things. Go tell someone you trust that life sucks right now and you need a hug. To the senior who feels lonely and isolated and depressed despite still being surrounded by their friends, procrastinate by writing thank you notes to the people that have made college special. Fill your life with truth. And remember that your identity isn’t found in what you’ve done and failed to do. It’s found in what Christ did. To everyone, watch Bojack Horseman on Netflix (but don’t binge it). Read Out of Solitude by Henri Nouwen (but don’t binge it?). And please be honest with people you trust about your weaknesses. We all have them. It is destructive to both the self and to others when we pretend that we don’t.
I’m just starting season 2 of Bojack Horseman and season 2 of my adulthood. Here’s hoping that both protagonists find peace.
Porter is ..
[1] Bojack Horseman, Season 1, Episode 3. Netflix.
[2] Nouwen, Henri Out of Solitude
[3] Nouwen, Henri. Out of Solitude pp. 22-23
[4] Bojack Horseman Season 1, Episode 9. Netflix.
[5] Nouwen, Henri. Out of Solitude pp. 25-26.
[6] Nouwen, Henri. Out of Solitude p. 28