Rethinking the Lotus VI

Innumerable students today are numbing the hurts and pains of their past in a variety of different ways. If you have the opportunity to engage young people on this topic, you can make use of stories and movies. Examples would include the story of the Lotus-Eaters from The Odyssey, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (either the book or the movie), The Family Man, Leaving Las Vegas, When a Man Loves a Woman, or The Matrix.

Discussion Questions:

• Which character in the story was turning to something to numb the pain in his or her life?

• What did that character turn to? Did it solve anything, or did it cause more problems?

• What pain do you think the character was trying to numb or forget?

• Do you identify with this character in any way?

• Have you ever tried to numb or forget pain in your life? What did you turn to? Video games?TV? Drugs or alcohol? Busyness? Did it solve anything or cause more problems?

• What pain were you trying to cover up, forget about, or numb by turning to this diversion?

Rethinking the Lotus V

As ninth-graders go, Terry was a pretty typical kid. He had average grades, average athletic ability, average looks. For the most part, that is how Terry viewed himself: middle of the road, nothing special. His father had died when Terry was in the fifth grade, and the loss was especially difficult for his mother. While his mother increased her already heavy drinking to relieve the pain she was experiencing, Terry muddled his way through middle school. He had been largely unnoticed by his teachers. After all, he wasn’t exceptionally bad, nor was he exceptionally good. He was, well, somewhere in the middle.

If you had asked him what his interests and hobbies were, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you much. His heart was in pain, though on the outside it really wasn’t observable. One day, a new student arrived at his lunch table, bearing news of enticing lotus fruit. His name was Gordon, and he was what the teachers and administrators would refer to as a “problem child.” He was open about the fact that he frequently used marijuana and would share stories of being high with the others at the lunch table. Intrigued, Terry began spending more time around Gordon, eventually riding the bus to his house after school one day. It was there that Terry first experimented with pot. He and Gordon began riding their dirt bikes to the middle of the woods. There they would “light up” after school. His mother, in a haze of alcohol, would rarely say anything to Terry about not coming home from school until hours after it had already ended. He would spray down his clothes with deodorant to cover up the scent of the smoke.

For the greater part of his ninth-grade year, Terry would steal money from his mother’s wallet and buy dope from Gordon to satisfy his ever-growing cravings for the drug. This wasn’t his personality. He wasn’t really a thief. But his demeanor changed, he became apathetic toward his schoolwork, and his grades began to plummet. He cared little about his future and his life, for thought of getting high consumed his thoughts.

The parallel between the mythical lotus and substance abuse is a fairly easy one to draw. When Terry was high, the fact that he was average didn’t matter. The fact that his father was dead didn’t matter. The fact that his mother was an alcoholic didn’t matter. When he was high, the marijuana whispered softly that all was right in the world and that he didn’t need to worry about his cares. The wounds of his heart were still throbbing, but he was, in the words of Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb.”

Rethinking the Lotus II

Barry was a high school senior who was well liked by his parents, peers, and teachers. He was a solid basketball player and had already been accepted at George Washington University. His life did have its challenges, however. His father, who was respected in the community, had spent precious little time with Barry as he was growing up. He had come up with any number of excuses throughout the years as to why he was unable to take Barry camping or even play catch in the backyard. Intellectually, Barry had grown to accept this lack of interaction as normal, but his heart refused to go along. Something was missing in all of this.

After basketball practice, Barry would typically go to his room and surf the Internet for hours. He was drawn to the possibilities that the Web offered the endless array of information and stimulation. Often, he would log in to the instant messenger and communicate for hours, sharing intimate details with complete strangers. Here was intimacy without strings attached. Frequently, Barry would search through a variety of Web sites, finding more “eye candy” than the mind could fathom. He began going to sleep later and later at night, as his online activities began to absorb more and more of his time. His basketball coach noticed that he seemed increasingly lethargic on the court, and his grades began to drop. The cyber-lotus fruit of the Internet had done its work well. Barry had numbed the pain of his missing years with his father, and he was now lost in a fog of chat rooms and virtual worlds.