I managed to squeeze in some time to watch all four seasons of The Handmaid's Tale. So excited for the upcoming seasons! Wrote about it in my journal and thought I might share it here. In case you have no plans of ever watching the show (although I suggest you should — it's good!), hopefully you may still get something out of this. Needless to say, be warned: spoilers ahead! 

Just to give a bit of a context, here's the main plot of the show: In Gilead, a futuristic United States of America under a totalitarian patriarchal theocracy, fertile women who are considered as religiously immoral are given the role of handmaids — glorified baby-makers for the male commanders and their wives. Along with many other human rights, a handmaid's right of being a mother and being called by one's actual name are taken away by the State. Other women who may not be handmaids are still subjected to some twisted hierarchy with corresponding roles: wives, aunts, marthas, jezebels, and so on. 

June is quite selfish and vindictive. She is self-absorbed and is only concerned about herself, her interests, her wants. But then I guess the whole series is her journey towards becoming the 'selfless hero'. But her intention, so far, on destroying Gilead is because Gilead destroyed her — it is purely for retribution. The outcomes are very heroic but her intentions are quite malicious. Case in point: the 86 children of Gilead that she smuggled to Canada. When asked what drove her to do it, she said that she wanted Gilead to feel the hurt of having your children taken away from you — not because Gilead isn't the best place for children to be raised and to grow up in, although she's aware of this fact, too. Personal vendetta is her driving force rather than idealism. She acts based on this and fuck the consequences, as her friend Moira remarked.

Speaking of idealism, Commander Lawrence is the idealistic one. He is considered as the brilliant architect of the Gilead economy. He's been placed in a powerful position where he can actualize his ideas — 'to create a humanity' in his own words, or to create a utopian society. He called out June for being useless due to her selfish intentions and lack of vision or lack of contribution to the collective. Commander Lawrence, compared to June, has idealistic intentions — saving the environment, reducing carbon footprints, increasing the birth rates, maximizing fertility rates, and so on. Yet, he has found himself creating a monster instead, which is Gilead. And June knows that he feels guilty for having looked at people as statistics and commodities only serving Gilead and that this has taken a toll on his beloved wife's mental stability. June, after being called as 'useless' by Commander Lawrence, fought back and told him that 'he's worse than useless' for having created such a place teeming with suffering. But towards the end of Season 4, Commander Lawrence is perhaps resolved on cleaning up the mess he made — I don't know, he's quite a difficult character to read, quite morally ambiguous, which may be why I find him the most interesting.

Perhaps June and Commander Lawrence are the thesis vs antithesis, and their teaming up will result into a synthesis of sorts: Commander Lawrence with his collective vision and June with her acts of heroism and her bravery. I'm quite excited on how this will play out in the show. It's so well-written! (And of course, the source material is great too, I presume).

June, or even Emily and many other handmaids, can clearly see their misery and they're willing to do anything to get out of their situation. Janine, on the other hand, is such a fascinating character because she sees beauty in whatever situation she's in. She knows things are wrong but she tries to see the good and don't easily dismiss it. Even during her days in the 'colonies', she was able to appreciate the wild flowers growing in the radioactive wastelands and also encouraged two of the women to celebrate their love and get married. Emily scolded her for it and compared their lives to that of cows — they are to toil to no end and then die unceremoniously; they don't get to celebrate and get married or whatever. Janine replied, 'But we're not cows.' It's such an innocent and funny response but it does hold meaning.

If I'm in their shoes, will I adapt an outlook like that of Janine's? She focuses on the tiny blessings, she appreciates beauty wherever she can find it, she doesn't complain too much, she's quite simple-minded, easily contented, and she seems happier than the rest of the handmaids. However, this kind of mindset also blinds her to the truth that her situation, as well as that of many other women, is just so fucked up. She has become so passive to the many abuses of Gilead. Ignorance is a bliss indeed; or in Janine's case, choosing ignorance is a bliss.

Then there's June — her constant discontent have empowered a lot of women to fight back and rebel against Gilead. She lacks vision, yes, and she acts without thinking of the consequences. But she's getting things done, and her actions may just propel things into a better direction and destroy Gilead. She knows that the current conditions must be changed and improved, because whatever small goodness that exists in such a place as Gilead is rare and scarce, impermanent, and somewhat illusory, even pointless. So, in other words, her discontent is what is needed — even if along the way, there are casualties to such discontent and it guarantees more suffering in her part.

This can be related to the hustle culture of 'staying hungry', of aggressiveness and go-getting. People are encouraged to want more and more and more, and to want better. But this is at the cost of mental suffering, a myopia of goals, an overwhelming need for productivity and monetization, and a bottomless cornucopia of desires. It's a daily hell but at least we are 'progressing'.

On the other end of the spectrum are most of the eastern philosophies, most prominently, Buddhism. Suffering is everywhere — there's no escape from it. There may be degrees to suffering but they're all suffering just the same. In principle, we are capable of adapting ourselves to it. Happiness isn't achieved through making external conditions perfect but by being able to control our view or outlook on things. But then, this mentality may tolerate the cruelty or the misery of our present condition, not just for us as individuals but to so many other people. You may be able to be happy and contented, but you remain in a cycle of poverty or abuse. 

I guess this isn't really a matter of 'either/or', is it? The world is in need of balance — of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis. I will follow the philosophy that serves me at a given time — does that make me without core? without conviction?

Reading the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl feels like receiving a warm hug from someone, even a stranger that you least expect, and such embrace feels so comforting and oddly familiar. 

The last couple of years have been rough on almost everyone. I've been fortunate and so grateful to not suffer too greatly in comparison to a lot of people around the world, but my circumstance also somehow makes me guilty of even daring to think that I suffer; I must not complain at all, or even feel an ounce of despair, because other people have it worse. 

Frankl, also the main proponent of the Logotherapy (a psychotherapy that focuses on finding one's own meaning in life), talked about the concept of 'provisional existence of unknown limits'. This global pandemic seems endless, limitless, isn't it? Does it get better by the end of 2021? By 2022? The first few months of 2023? Even with the vaccines, worse variants of the virus are still cropping up, hospitals find it hard to cope, oxygen supplies are running low, and superspreading events keep happening.

We're living with such an uncertainty, making our lives within this period rather provisional — sort of like in a limbo — thus we refer to the end of this pandemic as 'back to normal' because this time right now is not at all what we're used to and may not want to get used to. Because of this uncertainty and departure from normalcy, it is harder to have hope and belief in the future. Our sense of time gets distorted as we become more concerned with the immediate, that is, surviving and not getting ourselves and our loved ones hospitalized or killed from an invisible enemy. 

The 'provisional existence of unknown limits' can be a form of suffering, and suffering can kill the spirit. This incorporeal death leads to the eventual death of the body, as Frankl witnessed during his time as an inmate in the Nazi concentration camps. I mean no disrespect by comparing our experience with this pandemic to such a horrendous time in human history, but Frankl himself said that the suffering of the prisoners of war due to this provisional existence is just as true as the suffering of people who are facing joblessness or homelessness and such other precarious situations, like a global pandemic.

There can be meaning in suffering. According to Frankl, "An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete."

But Frankl has emphasized in his book, repeatedly, that the suffering we face and give meaning to must only be a suffering that's beyond our control. It is foolish to continue to suffer despite knowing that there's something we can do to end it. We take June's route when we know we can act to end such suffering, and if we can't, we take Janine's route. But then it's quite tricky to recognize the perfect moment to stop rolling the great stone uphill, just as the curse of Sisyphus. When do we know that suffering is actually beyond our capabilities and our control? When do we stop fighting / struggling? That's life, I guess, it takes practice.

This has gotten long but let me just quickly include some ways to cope according to Frankl. First, love as a source of strength: during his time in the concentration camps, memories of his wife and their life together was what gave him fulfillment in his heart. Perhaps this is because the ability to love, or having the chance of loving — not only limited to the romantic kind — can make a person feel more connected to his/her world rather than alienated and cut off from it, and connectedness can make us feel important, that we belong, comparable to a crucial piece in a big puzzle.

Another way to cope is by cultivating one's inner life: this place can offer refuge to a person from the 'emptiness, desolation, and spiritual poverty' of his/her external world. A rich and lush inner life is like an oasis in a vast desert. This inner life may consist of one's own memories and experiences, spiritual faith, principles and beliefs, dignity... anything that cannot be as easily stolen or destroyed as material possessions or social status.

Third, appreciation of the beauty of art and nature: even in the direst of places, such as a Nazi concentration camp, there exists beauty, in forms of art and nature. And no, art isn't only confined to galleries and museums nor it is exclusive to wealthy people; for as long as there is human creativity and sincerity, there art breeds as well. Art and the majesty of nature can make one's suffering smaller in scale. And Frankl might even argue that it is through suffering that one's receptors to beauty is and must be heightened. 

Fourth, a sense of humor: just like with art and nature, we can diminish the size of our suffering with lighthearted jokes. "The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent," Frankl said. So dank memes, anyone?

And lastly, a sense of gratitude: in recent years we've learned through scientific studies how important gratitude is to our well-being. But since time immemorial, gratitude is already appreciated for its mysterious ways of alleviating mental suffering. In the Stoic book by Marcus Aurelius, 'Meditations', he started off by expressing his gratitude to the many people in his life who have influenced him to become good. I followed this practice and eventually realized how much I love my family and friends and kind teachers, and then I, too, felt so loved in return. So simple a task yet so much impact.

Take care and be safe you who reads.

with love, 
abelink