Learned Helplessness

Earlier this year, I'd gotten into a good habit, even a rhythm.  Get up early, hit the gym at 6 am, leisurely breakfast, get into work early.  Then I started taking a grad level literature course, which threw off my bedtime.  By a lot.  Two nights a week, class ends at 11 p.m. and I'm often fired up afterward.  So it's been harder to get up early.  I've been more tired, and listening to the tiredness gave me an excuse to skip the workouts.  So now that I've not been going to the gym three days a week -- now that the habit has been broken -- it's been harder to go to the gym at all.  In fact, it feels unimaginably difficult.  As if I won't have the energy to get through the day if I work out in the morning (even though I know otherwise from experience).

But I did go this morning.  During this morning's workout, I watched "Anne" from Season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It's a wonderful episode that works on so many levels.  There's a character who calls herself Lily, pretty much a lost soul, who seems to be terrified of any form of self-sufficiency.  When Lily's boyfriend disappears, Lily turns to Buffy for help.  Buffy suggests they look for him:

Buffy: This'll probably go faster if we split up.
Lily: Can I come with you?

Time and time again, Lily is easily cowed and disheartened; she is easily led, but terrified to take any action on her own (even when Buffy instructs her to simply lead other folks to the exit while Buffy fights off the demons).

Lily's helplessness seems to be born of despair; when she is tricked into entering a demon-run labor camp, which she understandably takes for hell, she says she always thought she would end up here.

Helplessness can be learned fairly quickly.  When I was in law school, I lived in a dorm where breakfast and dinner were provided.  My life quickly organized itself around mealtimes.  Breakfast was easy enough (since I was in the building anyway), but I had to be home at 6 pm for dinner.  What I realized toward the end of my third year was that preparing my own food had come to seem very nearly impossible.  When I finally went out and bought some groceries, brought them to a kitchen, and followed a recipe to make dinner for my friends, it was a revelation.  I felt incredibly empowered.  And yet before law school, I'd been cooking for years.

It seems to me that, for the most part, each of us is born with the capacity to take care of ourselves and the capacity for connection with others.  And yet these skills require honing; they can atrophy rapidly with disuse.  And yet it seems clear that the capacity remains even when it has been long neglected.

Toward the end of "Anne," as Buffy seems to be making headway with the demons, the lead demon appears on the balcony, holding a knife to Lily's throat.  He knows of course, that this will put Buffy off her game -- and that Lily is the ideal victim (she won't resist).  When he releases Lily, she stands there docilely, a non-entity that everyone (including Lily herself) leaves out of their calculations.  And then, in a key moment as things are looking rather grim for our heroine, Lily suddenly pushes the demon off the balcony!  The reaction shots are priceless - Lily has astonished everyone. 

Buffy of course has gone through her own story arc during the episode and now understands that she can't just chuck it all and escape.  She is ready to return to her family and friends, and she sets Lily up with the basic building blocks of job and home.  For the first time in her life, Lily will be trying to live as a full-fledged human being. 

Lily (hesitantly): I'm not ... great at taking care of myself.

Buffy:  Gets easier.  Takes practice.

Sarah Michelle Gellar delivers that line brilliantly.  She speaks out of compassion, and yet without in any way sugar-coating it for Lily.  It will be hard to overcome the habits of helplessness, despair and dependence.  It's scary as anything.  But she knows that Lily -- like the rest of us -- is capable of it.  I just love this.