Who is an Animal
I always liked Animal from The Muppets, the seemingly unintelligible, maniac drummer who floated among the background providing a laugh on occasion. He was a wild one but did you ever notice how he was chained to the drums? According to a suspect source, the five words used to describe Animal by Frank Oz, the man who originally characterized him, are food, sex, drums, sleep, and pain. Though I haven't played drums since middle school band, the rest accurately sum up a significant portion of my life, but there must be something more, right?
Let's consider the life of Charlotte, my favorite storybook animal. When she first appears in Charlotte's Web, Wilbur is desperate for a friend as his isolation in Zuckerman's barn becomes overwhelming. Suddenly, a voice calls out to him, an offer of friendship is extended, and Wilbur finds Charlotte (Charlotte A. Cavatica to be exact) as the perfect companion outside of her animal nature: "Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty---everything I don't like...Underneath her rather bold and cruel exterior, she had a kind heart, and she was to prove loyal and true to the very end" (White 41). Of course, as a spider, Charlotte relies on her nature to survive, using skills passed down for generations to ensure her longevity and lineage, yet there is a discrepancy as she debates how to save the life of her friend, who is terrified of being killed.
Ernest Becker sniffs out the divide in The Denial of Death, sharing that "Animals are not moved by what they cannot react to. They live in a tiny world, a sliver of reality, one neuro-chemical program that keeps them walking behind their nose and shuts out everything else...[Man's] own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange" (50-51). Much like Wilbur, I fear The End, and it is my death anxiety, as Becker suggests, that unites me with all animals. However, like Charlotte, I have spent my life in pursuit of having my own needs met while neglecting to recognize the existential dilemma all species collectively face.
Food, sex, sleep, drums, and pain---MATTHEW becomes an "animal" as CHICO seeks to escape the reality of death by selfishly clinging to its own longevity. The resulting shame/guilt spiral is uncontrollable as love and joy are extinguished and fear becomes the norm, paving the way for addictive habits and high-risk behavior. In other words, I fear fully existing due to the cost of living YET I destroy myself fighting to survive: "Even in our passions we are nursery children playing with toys that represent the real world. Even when these toys crash and cost us our lives or our sanity, we are cheated of the consolation that we were in the real world instead of the playpen of our fantasies" (Becker 56). What would happen if I made more of a conscious effort to accept my fate while sustaining love and joy versus fear?
Turning back to Charlotte's Web, Chapter XIII, "Good Progress," exemplifies what we are able to accomplish when we focus less on our own longevity: "A spider can produce several kinds of thread. She uses a dry, tough thread for foundation lines, and she uses a sticky thread for snare lines---the ones that catch and hold insects. Charlotte decided to use her dry thread for writing the new message" (93). The "bloodthirsty" spider decides to forgo her needs to help save her friend; as a result, she find the words to prolong Wilbur's life. Much in the same way, Michael Berg suggests in The Way that "More than just noticing the pain that people experience in the world, we must actively search for it and teach ourselves to experience is as our own...Alone, we cannot possibly alleviate all the pain and suffering that exist...if we can help even one person, it is as though we've saved the whole world" (129-130). So the question remains...what is my animal nature? Is it an avoidance of my mortality through selfish means or an opportunity to transcend by accepting my fate and living selflessly?
Over the next few weeks, I will be reflecting on my experiences with "food, sex, pain, drums, and sleep" as I explore the chains that bind me to my death anxiety (a.k.a. CHICO's addictive behavior). Through this, my intent is to connect with CHICO and embrace the dark to better understand the positive and negative sides of my shadow. I hope you will follow along and share in your own experiences with your animal nature, but until then, here are some questions to consider:
How would you describe your animal nature? What words come to mind?
Do you consider this description to be positive/negative/neutral?
Who is your favorite Muppets character?
See you in the zoo,
Who (?)