Bite Me

BITE ME

“The struggle for existence is a struggle ‘for’ something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.” - Viktor Frankl 

Nothing says “good morning” quite like discovering that the steering wheel, headrests and contents of my truck’s cab are now interconnected by hundred of crisscrossed spiderwebs, glistening in the sunlight like a time-lapse aerial shot of flight traffic over a major airport. Even though I was raised by a mom (until I was grown, at 8), who raised Black Widow spiders in jars in the bathroom of our cinder block house, something about sitting in the midst of fresh webbing is a tad creepy. But then I remembered what I learned from Viktor Frankl…and Peter Parker. Let’s start with Frankl.

When U.S. forces freed Viktor Frankl, this Austrian doctor who was thrown into 4 successive Nazi concentration camps over a 6-year span for the crime of being Jewish when Hitler invaded, they were unaware that he was already free. The G.I.s were also unaware that the emaciated man who emerged from Camp Horror would also become the same Dr. Viktor Frankl whose 20-plus books over the next 45-years would redefine psychology – and the human connection to meaning - forever. I wonder if they asked him how he did it. How was Dr. Frankl able to survive suffering through the types of circumstances that most of us could not even imagine? I know he dealt with a spider or 2…thousand.

It took Dr. Frankl nearly a decade after his deliverance to complete Man’s Search For Meaning, where he shared his very simple antidote for suffering with the world:

“Man’s ultimate freedom,” he wrote, “is the freedom to control our attitude even in situations we can do nothing about.” In other words, we have a “choice” even when we’re not given a choice. Viktor Frankl created a choice by giving his suffering “meaning and purpose.” When Nazi scientists performed ignoble experiments and surgeries on him, for example, he chose this to mean that he was saving someone else – someone less resilient – from this same suffering by taking their place.

While my worst day on Planet Earth doesn’t even compare to Dr. Frankl’s best day in Dachau or Auschwitz, I believe I have gleaned some from Frankl’s wisdom. The following nugget didn’t come to me immediately after reading Man’s Search For Meaning in 2000. It actually came the day after watching the movie Spiderman (2002).

Comic Books and Movie heroes put so much emphasis on “superpowers” and their sources that they often neglect the “humans” who receive the powers. No one in the movie Spiderman would have embraced the radioactive spider bite quite like guileless Peter Parker. Mary Jane would have run from it, Aunt May would have crushed it and Norman Osborn would have trained it to bite Senators on the be-hind. Same spider. Many choices. I’m convinced that the reason why so many people have adverse “reactions” to everything from spiders to in-laws is because they react the same way every time there is a threat of being bitten!

Peter Parker taught us that you don’t have to call the doctor, Google Web MD or have your vampire friend Edward suck the venom from your butt cheeks. There is another choice: Embrace the bite. Give it purpose. Give it meaning.

Don’t try this one at home…until you’re ready.

I was working in my yard the day after watching Spiderman in the theaters, when it was time to turn on the hose to water the flowerbeds. The flowers in my beds were replaced often because I didn’t water them. I wasn’t lazy. It’s just that the valve connected to the hose was 14-inches down a 4" diameter hole in the yard - where all kinds of unrecognizable creeping things competed for existence in the Great Circle of Death! I know, God gave man dominion over all the creeps - but they still freak me out! Or they used to.

On this day, something in me had changed. I realized I had a choice. It fact, after Frankl’s awareness of my “human” freedom, coupled with Peter Parker’s example of embracing spider bites, I actually WANTED to shove my hand in the hole of creeping death! I probably even taunted the bugs with an occasional “Bite Me!”

To this day, I am so much better even in everyday life at choosing responses instead of “reacting” to outside influences. I have simply learned to “integrate” the power of those things that happen to me with my inner human, choosing to embrace them wholly so I become stronger.

“I have set before thee Life and Death, Blessing and Cursing. Choose Life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” – The God of Moses

Even when we feel like we don’t, we always have the choice to add meaning and purpose to our actions. What if we exercised this choice more often? What if we told our "selves" what the meaning and purpose of a job interview was going to be before we left for the interview? Before we left to buy groceries? Before we went to the movies? Before we volunteered to help others? We don’t have to wait for a challenging experience to activate our ultimate human freedom. In fact, if we used it more often for the good things in life, this integrative power may actually be more accessible in those circumstances outside our control.

You and I get to choose the meaning behind everything we do. We get to choose what we’re fighting for. We can choose whom we’re living for. We can choose what we learn from an experience, and we can choose what effect that experience has or will have on us. This is our ultimate human freedom.

In my truck this morning, I chose to embrace this prolific spider invasion like Peter Parker would have, and like Viktor Frankl taught us to. I theorized that it must be a Florida spider that had hitched a ride in the box of books resting in my back seat. I CHOOSE to call it a "tourist" spider that won a free trip to Vegas and it's probably wiped out from crisscrossing the strip, clubbing all night. And if it wanted to bite me – as I’m sure some tourists do - then I will choose to embrace the super-power properties that will make me immune to hurricanes and humidity… maybe I’ll even be able to climb walls…without caffeine.

I wonder if there is a Spiderman Workout I can download from the internet…
-TT