Nowhere Man

"Me, I didn't mean anything. About anything, to anyone. And I knew that guaranteed me a long, depression-free life."

--Will, About a Boy


"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden


"He's just a nowhere man
Living in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody."
--John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Nowhere Man


At numerous points in the movie About a Boy the main character, played by Hugh Grant, struggles to explain to other characters what exactly he does. The answer which he often arrives at after a few agonizing minutes of bluffing and bluster delightful to the viewer is--Nothing. He does nothing. That is, he spends his days watching TV, eating out, meeting women, and getting his hair "carefully disheveled".  His likability is nearly all due to the witty, sometimes scandalous lines delivered with considerable verve and an adorable half smile but the persistently brilliant Mr. Grant.

This movie is ostensibly about the pitfalls of perpetual bachelorhood, but its message is much deeper and also much less pretentious. Will is upfront with the viewer about his lack of motivation, his lazy acceptance of the status quo. As evidenced by the quote above, he knows that his life doesn't mean much--and he doesn't let it bother him. He lives for the daily ritual of momentary satisfaction, for the smug sense that he is tapping into something that the people around him don't quite get. Perhaps he's right about that, but his assumptions regarding other people end there: he is more than happy to ignore them unless they have something for him. "Every man is an island" he likes to say--an eye-roll inducing inversion of the John Donne quote (not Jon Bon Jovi, as the movie repeatedly claims). His meaning is that other people don't matter much--the goal in this life is to be self-sufficient, supplying your own happiness so that others can't bring you down. And he has perfected it to a science.

One must admit, there's something tempting in the idea of utter self-sufficiency, when I pause to consider all the tempests, meaningful and petty, I have endured because of another person. But even Will hasn't achieved that highest goal as the maker of his own happiness--after all, he subsists without a job not by any cleverness on his own part but because his father happened to be the lyricist of a Christmas themed hit song which still rakes in the royalties. Will owes a lot to that ancestor, just as much as he owes to his hairstylist and the people on TV, not to mention the people who, later on, come to mean much more to him than these individuals.

Henry David Thoreau had an entirely different kind of man in mind when he penned his line about "quiet desperation". However, it may as well refer to Will as to anyone else. Underneath his comfortable, self-gratifying existence there seems to exist a constant struggle against who and what he is. He is not entirely devoid of selfless or human emotion, he simply looks down upon it with a sort of smug condenscension. He is the first to admit that his carefully structured exist is completely devoid of any inner meaning. For him, it is a note of pride. Thoreau's quietly desperate everyman was an individual similarly content with his circumstances, for the sole reason that he cannnot see beyond his immediate surroundings and everyday existence.

Thoreau and Will have something in common in that neither of them are employed in the conventional sense. Will spends his days in carefully constructed leisure, while Thoreau searched for self-improvement in the highest sense. Will isn't interested in improving; he's more interested in perpetuating. Which all begs the question: what is self-improvement really worth? Are we required to do something with our lives, or is it enough to just be content, even if that comes at the cost of cutting ourselves off from other people?

I've always thought my ideal life would be remarkably similar to Will's. I'd like to live alone, in a house on the beach or in the middle of the forest, with perhap a feline or two for company. I'd spend my days reading the newspaper, sipping coffee, cooking, perhaps cleaning, going for long walks, maybe doing a bit of writing. All innocent enough activities in and of themselves--in fact, what I've just described is remarkably similar to the life I live right now, sans the beachhouse and a few extra cats. But I'm starting to question the wisdom behind such a comfortable existence--surely it's good, even necessary, to push our comfort zone every now and then, to reach out to the world beyond our doorsteps and take a moment to do something about the stories we read in the newspaper.

Which all sounds very exciting in theory. But I am a woman of words, not action.

Thoreau, in his book Walden is much more of a philosopher than an activist, much as I see myself. But he was also not shy about extending his message, and reaching out to his neighbors. While Walden is often seen as a tribute to retreating into nature, it's more about creating yourself as a better person and being honest with the world. Which sounds terribly cliche, I know. But it's a good book. You should read it. And lest you have been suffering under the misconception that Thoreau was some kind of eccentric hermit, know that he was also the author of On Civil Disobedience, an entirely activist approach to peaceful protest that served as an inspiration for Gandhi and MLK.

So I think ultimately there is something terribly valuable in not being, well, apathetic. Of not getting caught up in our everyday rhythm of small ambitions and "nowhere plans." If everyone lived like  Will, then the world might be a more peaceful, less conflicted place. But it would come at the cost of severing that connection with others that can be more important than anything else. Thoreau can come across as preachy, even self-righteous, but he is upfront about his shortcomings--"I have never known a worse man than myself." He readily admits that he is incapable of changing the world around him, so his solution is to begin with himself. That is a worthy starting point but it's not enough. Sometimes we need others to change us.