There are movies that I can watch - will watch - any time I happen upon them, regardless of where it is in the narrative. These aren't "I missed the beginning" movies. These are repeated experience "I love this movie" movies. "The Big Lebowski" is one of those movies.
I'm probably more Donny than anyone else in the movie though I often fear I'm Walter. (I do have a temper and I've been known to become loudly committed to my own obsessions with rules and fair play.) In this case, though, as I watched "Lebowski," I wondered for the first time in the many times that I've watched it; could I have lived a happy life if I lived my life like The Dude?
Could I abide?
As hinted at above, I'm wound pretty tightly. I may be influenced by my fondness for John Goodman as an actor and the extra pounds I've carried for most of my life in thinking I might be a Walter but while I am highly opinionated, I do lack Walter's fondness for conflict and aviator glasses. On the whole, Donny's inquisitiveness and our shared family medical history (my father, both his brothers, and my paternal grandfather all died from heart attacks) makes Donny my projected presence in the story about the Dude's rug. Aside from dying young, Donny's life seems pretty chill. You have to watch the movie a couple of times before you gain an appreciation for Donny's subversive wit and wisdom. I was small and skinny like Donny when I was younger and I used to love bowling; duck pins as a teenager growing up on Army bases, rolling with my middle school friends, and candle pins as a young father, rolling with my daughter, who needed the bumper lanes much less than I did. So, there's a nostalgia there, a fondness for moments that echo with happiness.
Could I be happy as The Dude?
Believers in Multiverse Theory (I think; I was a Liberal Arts major, and even after almost 20 minutes on YouTube I'm still not sure I get it) would tell me my Dude-Self, in fact, already exists on another world in another universe. Given the right set of circumstances, my Dude-Self would be an inevitability.
Well, thanks, Einstein but my question wasn't whether or not I could be The Dude; it was whether or not I could be happy as The Dude; as a subsistence bowler, living on finder's fees for chasing down rich white guys' wandering trophy wives.
Maybe it's better to think of it in relative rather than absolute terms; not happy but happier.
I don't know that I'm particularly happy in this universe so I may be setting the bar low. The thing about this life - a competitive, capitalist, winners and losers kind of life - is that it's never enough. It can never be enough. There's always more; more money to be made, newer cars to buy, bigger houses to own - and no matter how much money you have, no matter how technologically advanced your automobile is, no matter how modern and secure your mansion overlooking the ocean is, and no matter how many robots are vacuuming that rug that really pulled the room together - you never stop worrying about the known and unknown unknowns. Or the known knowns for that matter. You don't retire as champion. You die with regrets so numerous there isn't time to ask forgiveness for all of them on your deathbed.
And yet, even as I come to grips with the inevitability of disappointment in this life, I can't help but want all those things. Money and the security it brings. A new car with life-saving technologies to compensate for my loss of visual acuity and diminished fast twitch muscle reflexes. A house as big and as climate-controlled as a museum. I'd really like a replicator like on "Star Trek" so I could have Irish Benedict for breakfast any time I want. I bet Bezos has one of those.
But is he happy?
Does my Dude-Self wonder about whether he's happier than me?
No.
The Dude abides.
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