The Count and the closure

Among Dumas treasure was Count of Monte Cristo: the betrayal, the incarceration, the transformation and finally the reward/revenge .

All neatly packaged and followed the sequences we wish we had in our own life. But life as it turns out, has its own foreseen conclusion imbedded at birth.

Closure is a psychological concept. It entails forgiveness and forgetfulness, not revenge (for vengeance is mine, said He).

Oh well, tell that to the victims of the Holocaust (or yesterday’s shooting with 9 dead in Germany). Or to the 34 year-old Wuhanese doctor, whose parting poem was so down-to-earth e.g. I have a house, am still making payment, a wife, still pregnant etc… the doc died. No closure, and showed no full face (mask on) and of course, no revenge (his wishes were for the world to stand up to the virus and to tell forth the truth).

In between birth and burial – the journey leads us to more betrayal than closure…perhaps only on the big screen, where Hollywood calculated a sugar boost at the end: the bad guys were sent to jail (or as in Con Air, out of jail, but barely made it home unscathed). In life, they wait for public amnesia then bail them out or shorten the sentences (Cohen not Cristo).

Count Monte Cristo had three things going for him: the treasure (luck), the stamina to escape & to swim (his skill) and his good friends (old prisoner/loyal pirate – his sidekick).

Those elements make for a good story: hero got locked up, hero escaped with help/luck, and hero returned in triumph and fanfare.

In real life, the only two variables we can count on are skills and relationships. Luck comes and goes (as people who won the lottery can attest with their fast happiness curve).

Some of us can only resort to one (our own survival skill). Let me end with a line that struck me from viewing the film – when the Count toasts to his yet-to-be-IDed-as son ” when you face the oncoming storm, head-on, then you know what kind of a man you really are”.

Bring it on. I already know the conclusion to our riddle called life. Closure or not, we have our built-in expiration date (largely constituted by DNA’s + nurture = nutrition). This most relevant question has always gotten swept under the rug, to make room for the trivial and frivolous.

I hope for luck, but I don’t count on them. I have survived thus far on stamina and skills. Now I need to work on the third element: you, my community of friends and good Samaritans. Notice I said “Samaritans”, not those privileged and Pharasaic strata. In the Count’s case, it’s those who were called “friends” that betrayed him in the first place.

In the end, he found friendships in most unlikely places. I guess you may say, he has his closure – on the floor, out of detention, next to an un-used up-scale bed, his.