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A client was here last week­end, doing one our Week­end Res­i­den­tials. I was think­ing about what to do on the Sat­ur­day evening, and I flashed on ““Joe Ver­sus the Vol­cano,” a 1990 com­edy star­ring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Now, I saw the movie back in the early 90s, but it wasn’t until I was out at The Haven for a cou­ple of courses that I “got” the movie. Bill O’Hanlon was teach­ing, and I was attend­ing. He showed excerpts of the movie, and com­mented relent­lessly. He pointed out tons of themes run­ning through the movie (the fac­tory where Joe works has a sim­i­lar look to the vol­cano, the light­ing indi­cates the person’s mood, it’s a movie about “soul / sole,” and there’s a real issue with “Brain Clouds.”)

I greatly enjoyed watch­ing it again a week ago But the high­light was when we hit “the Quote,” and I remem­bered how great the dia­logue is:

Patri­cia: “My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Every­body you know. Every­body you see. Every­body you talk to. He says that only a few peo­ple are awake and they live in a state of con­stant total amazement.”

Or, from a Bud­dhist perspective:

One of his stu­dents asked Bud­dha, “Are you the mes­siah?“
“No”, answered Bud­dha.
“Then are you a healer?“
“No”, Bud­dha replied.
“Then are you a teacher?” the stu­dent per­sisted.
“No, I am not a teacher.“
“Then what are you?” asked the stu­dent, exas­per­ated.
“I am awake,” Bud­dha replied.

Inter­est­ing. Of all the claims the Bud­dha could have made, he makes only one.

To be awake. But awake-ness of a pecu­liar kind. It is a state of aware­ness free from judge­ment, labelling, dis­trac­tion, or “pol­i­tics.” (Win­ning, los­ing, power, force.) Awake, with no other moti­va­tion than to expe­ri­ence life fully and deeply, while never, never cling­ing.

All about Leaps

The move fits with our sub-theme of late — mak­ing the “leap of faith.” You could say that this is the key theme of the movie — how one over­comes “fear” through leaping.

What is it about leaps that turn most folks into tubs of jello? Why is secu­rity prized so highly, when most rebel (qui­etly, usu­ally) at what they have to do for that secu­rity? I can’t tell you how many peo­ple I’ve known over the years who have set­tled for love­less rela­tion­ships, bor­ing jobs, blocked chances, all to be able to say, “Well, at least I have… some­thing!” It seems to take an ill­ness or a career col­lapse — some­thing dra­matic — to really shift the ground. Then, it’s leap or “drown,” leap or fall.

This first stage of the movie is all about fear, “the rut,” being mun­dane, being “stuck.”

This is cap­tured in the slog­ging, slowly mov­ing conga line of fac­tory work­ers, trudg­ing into a com­pany that makes med­ical imple­ments (“Home of the Rec­tal Probe!” — a require­ment for mov­ing past Freud’s anal stage, but I digress…) and 40 gal­lon drums of petro­leum jelly. Nice to see they have their bases covered.

Once Joe is diag­nosed with a Brain Cloud, (described in the movie as a rare, fatal dis­ease, with no symp­toms: “A con­di­tion when one’s mind is else­where and some­thing is for­got­ten or done incor­rectly because of it.”)

This con­di­tion describes the way most peo­ple live life.

Joe gets (and “gets”) the diag­no­sis, and with 6 months to live, decides to shift things around.

First off, he quits his dead-end job, and says the fol­low­ing to his boss:

“And why, I ask myself, why have I put up with you? I can’t imag­ine, but now I know. Fear. Yel­low freakin’ fear. I’ve been too chicken shit afraid to live my life so I sold it to you for three hun­dred freakin’ dol­lars a week!”
(1990, remem­ber )

The Brain Cloud diag­no­sis is sort of what is offered to us at each “jumping-off point.” We can do more of the same and stay where we are, or we can “leap into the vol­cano” and con­front our fear, our desire to be safe, our all-too-human ten­dency to hun­ker down in the famil­iar, no mat­ter how dreary.

Life, aka. a Brain Cloud, is always fatal. Life, as they say, is a fatal disease.

Joe imme­di­ately asks the recep­tion­ist (DeDe) out an a date — Meg Ryan plays 3 women in the movie, each per­fectly fit­ted for the “level of under­stand­ing” Joe is at. With DeDe, all Joe has is his diag­no­sis and a desire to do things dif­fer­ently. He doesn’t know how, he just knows he’s “dying.”

For exam­ple, DeDe sees Joe look­ing at his shoe and asks him what’s wrong. He says “I’m los­ing my sole.” Get it?

The name DeDe, by the way, is a deriva­tion of Deirdre, which means “broken-hearted,” or “sor­row­ful,” and per­haps “fearful.”

Joe has decided to shift gears, but doesn’t know how.

His date with DeDe goes nowhere — he reaches out to hold her hand and she gives him her closed fist. She sim­ply can’t get past Joe’s “diag­no­sis.” Joe, how­ever, is unde­terred. He says, [to DeDe]

“I mean, who am I? That’s the real ques­tion, isn’t it? Who am I? Who are you? What other ques­tions are there? What other ques­tions are there, really? If you want to under­stand the uni­verse, embrace the uni­verse. The door to the uni­verse is you!”

The way in is the way out

This is the per­spec­tive we “sell,” week after week. Not only is the door to the uni­verse you, it’s only you. For you, of course. So much for wait­ing around for res­cue, for “the right time,” for the cor­rect path.

Joe’s jour­ney actu­ally begins when a mys­te­ri­ous man, Mr. Gray­namore (obvi­ous, eh?) offers Joe a deal he can’t refuse. In return for a stack of unlim­ited credit cards, Joe will jour­ney to a Pacific Island and throw him­self into a vol­cano, thereby sav­ing both the island and a min­eral on the island Mr. Gray­namore wants.

This trip com­prises most of the movie — Joe jour­neys a “crooked road,” as do we all, to get to the “leap.”

The other two roles played by Meg Ryan are the daugh­ters of Gray­namore, Angel­ica and Patri­cia. Angel­ica is the wastrel. She has money, yet wastes her days in empty pur­suit of noth­ing.

She says, “I am com­pletely untrust­wor­thy … I’m a flibbertigibbet.”

She can­not seem to set her­self in motion. She claims to be a painter and poet. Her only paint­ing hangs in a restau­rant owned by her father. As for her poetry:

Angel­ica: Would you like to hear one of my poems?
Joe: Sure.
Angel­ica: “Long ago, the del­i­cate tan­gles of his hair cov­ered the empti­ness of my hands.” Would you like to hear it again?

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Joe is “all com­pas­sion”- he sees Angelica’s pain and lone­li­ness, and treats her with great dig­nity. How­ever, he is clear about his own path, and says, [to Angelica]

“If you have a choice between killing your­self and doing some­thing you’re scared of doing, why not take the leap and do the thing you’re scared of doing?”

Do it alone, in groups

At every stage, there was some­one “right there” who mir­rored Joe’s state of mind. In each case, Joe had to learn what he could, and move on, leav­ing DeDe, leav­ing Angel­ica, behind.

Joe meets Patri­cia aboard the ship that is sup­posed to take him to the Pacific Island. They get off to a rocky start, but later real­ize a deep attrac­tion. They are on the adven­ture together, although they also seem to “get” that they are inde­pen­dent of each other.

Tossed into the sea of change, the sea of tur­moil, each helps the other to make it to shore. Only the shore they make it to is the one they sought, and there’s a vol­cano ahead.

They dis­cover that there is more to vol­cano jump­ing than sim­ply show­ing up.

The path is pretty much one per­son wide. This is clear in the assent up the vol­cano — but here’s the point. Oth­ers are walk­ing the same path. You just have to go and find them — metaphor­i­cally cross an ocean to find them. There will be, as in the movie, ship­wrecks, and your bag­gage always come with you (It’s his lug­gage that saves Joe twice.) That being said,

Joe: “But there are cer­tain times in your life when I guess you’re not sup­posed to have any­body, you know? There are cer­tain doors you have to go through alone.”

We encour­age an active hunt for peo­ple who are walk­ing on the path with you.

There are oppor­tu­ni­ties to stop and talk, reflect, inter­act “get mar­ried,” etc. But again, the walk to the lip of the vol­cano is a solo trip that most peo­ple resist.

Why? because the nor­mal, mun­dane, day-to-day slog is so much fun? Because putting work (even fun work) ahead of “leap — work” is “what’s expected?” I offer “leap­ing” to many of my clients, and often that’s when “out come the excuses.” Maybe it would be best to re-evaluate.

Or, as Joe said to Patri­cia, his soul and sole mate, after all was said and done:

“I saw the moon when we were out there on the ocean, shin­ing down on every­thing. I’d been mis­er­able so long. Years of my life wasted. Been a long time com­ing here to meet you. A long time, on a crooked road. Did I ever tell you the first time I saw you, I felt like I’d seen you before?”

He had.

It’s almost a require­ment, this leap, if you don’t want to just lie there and take it. Drop­ping the excuses and walk­ing to edge requires great courage, and leap­ing — well, let’s just say you can’t bet on there being a net. There may just be, how­ever, an out­come you’d never have expe­ri­enced, pre-leap.

Still, the reluc­tance runs deep. Few make the leap, and some drown in the process. At the movie’s cli­max, Patri­cia joins Joe at the edge of the precipice, and they gaze into the flames.

Joe: Don’t do it [leap] for me.”

Patri­cia: “I’m not doing it for you! Joe, nobody knows any­thing. We’ll take this leap and we’ll see, we’ll jump, and we’ll see. That’s life.”

What, oh what, is so pre­cious about putting in time until you die?

Go, watch “Joe Ver­sus the Vol­cano,”. Then find your “vol­cano,” and leap!

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

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