A Long Way Down: What’s Holding You Back?

Image: Suicide by Scandinavian artist Joakim Back.
Caveat: Some possible book ‘spoilers’ here. But not really, unless you’re already part way through the book.

The novel has the typical Hornby sense of impending doom running throughout it, and the typical Hornby lame ending (it’s as if the author doesn’t want the novel to end, so it doesn’t, really), but it is still wonderful, utterly engaging, and thought-provoking. Perhaps this is why the movies made from his books don’t quite work — there just isn’t enough time in a two hour film for all the action plus all the reflection that the ideas in his novels warrant. Because of Hornby’s cleverness and his wry, delightful sense of humour, his novels cry out for cinematic treatment (since most movies today are so utterly lacking in both). Jess’ critique of Virginia Woolf is the most hilarious piece of writing I’ve read in a decade, and is alone worth the price of the book, but I suspect in the movie it will be just too much too fast to work — the audience will be laughing so hard they’ll drown out half the funny bits.

But it is the ideas in the book that had me shivering as I read, putting the book down and wandering around and thinking. I suspect his novels are Hornby’s cathartic way of getting these profound and troubling ideas out of his head where they can be examined more objectively (Hornby has an autistic child). There are three in particular that resonated with me, and they are all somewhat related, and a book about suicide is the perfect vehicle to illustrate them.

The first idea is that in life, as Jess puts it, we have no choice. We are who we are and we will do what we will do. This is the concept of ‘free will’, but reduced to immediate, personal terms. Despite all the New Years’ resolutions (A Long Way Down begins on New Years’ Eve), despite all the plans and self-help books and Getting Things Done tools we employ, we will ultimately do what were going to do anyway, and, more importantly, not do what we were not going to do anyway. Those who go up the tower with the intention of killing themselves consist of those who will go through with the plan, no matter what happens, sooner or later, and those who will not, no matter what happens. Hornby is saying that suicide prevention hotlines will only prevent those who would be prevented somehow or other anyway. The city of Toronto has spent a small fortune building walls and fences around its ‘popular’ suicide sites (mostly buildings and bridges) and is considering similar infrastructure in subway stations. They understate the creativity of those who will do what they will do. And those who lack imagination or knowledge or opportunity will find other, metaphorical ways to kill themselves: alcohol or other drugs, or just shutting down, disengaging. We are surrounded by the living dead, but not of the type you see in the movies.

The second idea, and the one that I think his title most refers to, is what is holding you back? Not just from committing suicide, but from doing other things you think you should be doing or wish you were doing. Here’s how Jess puts it:

The distance from the top of the tower to the bottom, from intent to realization, seems short, but is, in fact, a long way. While we are who we are and will do what we will do, it is not quite that simple. We are social creatures, and as we go through life we find ourselves limited by people, and held back, not so much by who they are as by what they stand for, the role we, or they, or fate, has chosen for us. Are these ropes, these people and things and circumstances that hold us back, imposed on us, or are they our own self-imposed lifelines? If we have no choice, is that to some extent because of the restrictions we have somehow chosen to impose on ourselves?

When I met my wife, I was pretty messed up, and she has kept me on a pretty short lead ever since. I owe her everything for that, I think. In recent years, though, now that our* amazing children no longer need our support, she has loosened the lead somewhat. Or maybe I tugged the lead out of her hand. Or perhaps it wasn’t ever there at all, just a figment of my imagination, self-imposed. (It’s a good thing she doesn’t read my blog; I wonder if that is deliberate, too?)

You can perhaps guess at the third idea in this book, since it follows somewhat from the other two: What happens when we suddenly lose our lifeline? Martin says:

We cling to our presumed choices, our dreams, our distant plans and hopes, as if they were lifelines keeping us from careening off into space, and perhaps they are. I imagine myself an activist, a much-published and influential author, a founder of intentional communities, an incubator of natural enterprises, a change agent revolutionizing the way we teach, the way we treat animals, the way we produce energy, the way our economic and political systems work, the way we think about the world. All of these valiant roles I picture myself filling, yet I inch towards them so slowly that progress can barely be measured. Are these my lifelines, my tower ledge, and do I know in my heart that none of these heady roles is my destiny? Is that why I grabbed onto the non-philosophy of John Gray, giving me permission to fail at all of these because, as he says, it is not in human nature that any of these changes can occur on any meaningful scale? Is his infuriating belief that the best we can do, all we can do, is to be a good model for those in our immediate communities and to be open to and aware of and fully participating in life’s astonishing joys — is this my new lifeline, thin and frayed and shabby as it may be in comparison with the awesome, grandiose ones I clinged to before?

And what would become of me if I were to lose this lifeline too?

The questions in the two paragraphs above are rhetorical, but these three are not — the great take-away from Hornby’s book is how we, each for ourselves, decide to answer these questions when we close the book’s cover:

• If we have no choice, how can we best stop fighting the inevitable, stop wasting time trying to be what are not and cannot be (and trying to make others what they are not), get real about our hopes and dreams, and accept and understand the way things are and why, and make the best of who we are and what we are inevitably going to do and be anyway?
• What is holding us back? What is keeping us from being what we are going to be and doing what we are going to do? Why is it holding us back? Unless it is self-delusion (the dangers of idealism again) that is holding us back, there may be no changing these restrictions, no loosening of the ropes, but at least we should be able to recognize them and understand their purpose. In Jess’ ‘stupid dog’ analogy, we can accomplish a lot within the constraints of the leash without unnecessarily and foolishly choking ourselves all the time.
• What happens when we suddenly lose our lifeline? There is a terrible story in today’s Toronto Star about a water-loving dog who slipped his leash, ran off, and ended up drowning in a municipal reservoir whose sides were too steep to climb. Some lifelines are useful, even essential to our health and sanity. Others merely hold us back, delay us from being who we really are and doing what we are meant to do, waste our lives away in illusionary imprisonment. What is frightening is that we don’t know which is which, and we don’t know what we will do, and feel, if we suddenly lose our lifelines. But perhaps by imagining what would happen if we did lose them, we might free ourselves from the ones that are merely unhealthy, merely holding us back from being something more than who we are. 

Nothing simple here. Beneath the brilliant raucous humour of Hornby’s writing lie some very dark issues, matters of life and death, like a black hole twinned with a star going nova.

(*hers biologically, though I am honoured and humbled that they call me their father,considering the deliberately small role I played in their upbringing)