Illustration by Dola Sun
I’ve been binge-watching the show 24. You may know the premise: Each season is one day long, with every episode representing one hour of the day, as federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) rushes to save the world from catastrophe. The show came out in 2001. Back then, I had zero interest in watching such a spectacle of a program, with its vision of the world as mostly dangerous and hostile.
Now I’m drawn to it, completely against my better judgment. It’s so ridiculously violent. I fast-forward through torture scenes and play word games on my phone when everyone starts shooting. I usually lose track of the convoluted plot around the 15th or 16th hour. I know not to get attached to characters, because the show just kills them off. You also can’t trust anyone, and the show has a serious overpopulation of red herrings.
There is only one reason I keep watching, and that’s the unwavering belief I have that Jack Bauer is going to save the day. Sure, he’s going to get stabbed and shot and electrocuted and have to parachute off a plane carrying a nuclear bomb before it crashes into the desert, but he’ll survive. He’ll storm a compound guarded by 20 armed men and come out on top. He’ll get the evidence, the code, the schematics (so many schematics!), and the names of the bad guys. No matter how desperate it seems, he never, ever gives up.
I hate most everything else about the show except that minute-by-minute-chronicling of someone not giving up.
As I write this, I’m staring at the white board in my office, on which I’ve written, “Do not give up.” It’s a note to remind myself not to give up on the novels I’m trying to sell, even though the process is testing every dimension of my patience. I say it to myself over and over as I work with my drafts, e-mail my agent, and sketch out the next novel I want to write. Don’t give up, you clever girl, and it will happen.
It means something else, too. There is a person in my life who is using substances and struggling with mental health. “I will never, ever give up on you,” I say to them often. But it wasn’t until I started going to Nar-Anon meetings that I realized even Jack Bauer can’t fix this situation.
Nar-Anon is a 12-step program for friends and family members affected by someone else’s addiction. Before my first meeting, what I’d known of 12-step programs was mostly from movies and television: Characters talking about “going to meetings” and scenes of people sitting in a circle and talking about their rock-bottom moments.
My husband and I showed up at the first meeting with jittery legs and question marks on our faces. We were welcomed warmly, and it didn’t take long to learn the cadence of how meetings went. First, a gentle reminder that we weren’t there to try to change anyone else, only ourselves. Then a reading of some passages from various materials, followed by a few minutes of journaling and an opportunity to share.
Anonymity is a key tenant, so I can’t tell you anything about anyone else. But I can tell you about me. And at my first meeting, when it was my turn to speak, I said, “I kind of forgot 12-step things were all about a higher power.” Several people smiled knowingly.
I’d certainly heard the serenity prayer before, and I knew there was a strong spiritual element. So I hadn’t exactly forgotten. It’s more that I was hoping there was a more concrete answer. Something that would make the person I love who is struggling just stop. Some secret that had been hiding in a dusty church basement all along.
Turns out that the group isn’t about fixing people or solving their problems. It isn’t about saving them. It isn’t about being the hero. It’s actually kind of about, well, giving up. Those are essentially the first three steps: Admit you’re powerless over the addict, believe in a power greater than yourself, and turn the problem over to that higher power. The 12-step approach is predicated on surrender, which is why it doesn’t work for everyone.
But could this idea work for me, the woman who solves problems and fixes sentences for a living? Could the way toward not giving up on a person start with giving up? If I was to turn the problem over to a higher power, I would have to get Jack Bauer out of my head. And as I think we’ve established, Federal Agent Bauer doesn’t go gently into the night.
In my twenties, when I was still new to yoga and before I’d taken 500-plus classes, an instructor said to me, “Don’t try hard. Never try hard.” It was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, and I never went back to his class again.
On the first date I had in 2002 with my now-husband, I told him I had just been laid off from my job and was going to be a freelance writer. He tried to talk me out of it. Watch me defy the odds, dude, I thought. He’s been a stay-at-home dad since 2008, and I’ve supported us with freelancing.
And someday soon, if I don’t give up—which I won’t!—I’ll have my novels published. Some aspiring writer will ask how I did it, and I will say, “I just didn’t give up.” The key to life, I will tell them, is to set your mind to get the result you want, and if someone thinks you can’t do it, that’s all the more motivation.
Being a doer, a not-giver-upper, a narrative-maker works in all areas of life. Really well, in fact. Except, that is, the ones involving other people.
During a long vent session, I was telling my friend, Emily, about this situation. How it seemed like nothing was ever going to change, how I knew I couldn’t control things but didn’t actually know what to do with my arms and legs while I sat there unable to find the fix for a terrible situation. She said, “Do you know the parable of the Chinese farmer?”
It’s a 2,000-year-old story that goes like this: A farmer and his son relied on their trusty horse to help tend their fields. One day, the horse ran away. “What terrible luck that your horse ran away!” the farmer’s neighbors all said. The farmer shrugged his shoulders and said, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”
A day or so later, the horse came back with two wild horses following him. “What great luck that you have two more horses!” the neighbors said. The farmer again shrugged. “Good, bad, who knows?”
The farmer gave one of the untamed horses to his son to train. While riding the horse, the son was thrown off and broke his leg. “What awful luck that he can’t help you with farming!” the neighbors said. And again, the farmer did his good-or-bad-who-the-hell-knows shrug.
Then the Emperor’s army showed up. They were conscripting the oldest son from every family into the army. When the soldiers came to the farmer’s house, they saw the son lying in bed with his broken leg and left him behind. As the neighbors tearfully bid goodbye to their sons, they said to the farmer, “What good luck that your son didn’t have to go.” He gave them the same reply again, “Good? Bad? Who knows.”
As my friend told me the story, I remembered I’d heard it before from a therapist at the inpatient unit where my loved one stayed last year. If I haven’t mentioned it yet, meaningful coincidence is my higher power. Hence, this little parable has been with me every day for a while. Sure, it’s a story about silver linings, but it’s also about not committing to a narrative, letting events unfold, and letting go of the idea that you’re the one pulling the strings.
What a cruel thing for a writer to have to surrender her narrative. What a Step 3 mindfuck. But, also, all that’s left to do.
The other night, I received a heart-stopping, middle-of-the-night call from an emergency room nurse at Mercy Clermont. My loved one was being treated there, not exactly because of substance use, but it was a contributing factor. I made the long trek out State Route 32, thinking of horses and luck and nuclear bomb codes. When the hospital’s sign came into view, I laughed out loud at the name of the street where I needed to turn: Bauer Road. You just can’t make this shit up.
I left Jack and my narrative gifts in the car and went inside to meet the moment, maybe understanding clearly for the first time how to give up while never giving up.
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