You're the star of your own story, and it's tough
“You’re born alone and you die alone.
And this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts.
But I never forget.
I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”
- Don Draper, from the hit TV show, ‘Mad Men’
Mad Men was a show that told the story of the birth of the golden age of advertising. Whilst a fictional story, its roots lie in historical truths of the industry. Made by AMC, it received huge critial acclaim:
It holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy Awards won by a drama series in a single year. In 2011, it won 19 Emmy Awards, surpassing the previous record held by "The West Wing"
It also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series four times (2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011)
I loved it. Many people did. Because it spoke to so many of our fundamental human emotions and, crucially, our flaws. And Don Draper, played by the handsomely mysterious Jon Hamm, was its central figure.
The words captured above come from the pilot episode of the show. And without watching anything else, they tell you the whole story.
Draper’s view on the world was nihilistic in the extreme. Nihilists typically reject or deny the existence of inherent moral or objective truths, asserting that concepts such as morality, purpose, and value are human inventions without any absolute foundation. In other words, the world is ultimately harsh and we’re destined to fight against its bleakness.
In the extended clip of the above quote1, it is the context of talking about love that informs Draper’s view of the world. Or the lack thereof. He believes love as a concept only exists because people like him, advertising men adept at witchcraft, invented it.
But Draper didn’t arrive at this outlook because he discovered a human truth that no one before him had come across. He arrived at it because of the story of his own life. A story that he tries to bury and leave behind.
But when we try to ignore them, our stories can rear up as hurricanes in our lives; we can try to run from them, but if we do, they’ll catch us, and sweep us away.
In the show, Don Draper was born as Dick Whitman in a small, impoverished town. His childhood was marked by hardship and struggle. Having a mother, a prostitute, who struggled to make ends meet and an abusive alcoholic as a father, meant that Dick had no stable source of love or comfort to turn to as he developed as a child.
Growing up in such a dysfunctional environment, the ‘story’, or lesson, that Don learned early on was of the importance of self-reliance and the art of reinvention. As a boy, he found solace in storytelling and creating his own narratives, a skill that would later serve him well in the advertising world.
Don's relationship with his parents was strained, to say the least. His mother was distant, preoccupied with her own struggles, and his father's presence was a source of fear and pain. This tumultuous upbringing shaped Don's view of the world and instilled in him a desire to escape his circumstances.
Fate intervened when a tragic accident took the life of the real Don Draper, a fellow soldier during the Korean War. Seizing the opportunity, Dick Whitman assumed the identity of the deceased soldier, creating a new life for himself. This act of reinvention not only allowed him to escape his troubled past but also set the stage for his transformation into the enigmatic and charismatic figure that would revolutionize the advertising industry.
But Don never outran the hurricane of his early childhood. Throughout the series he suffers through a series of painful relationships across his partners, family, colleagues, and most people he meets. He never gives himself the chance to learn what love might actually be, because it’s too painful for him to reflect on what he was taught it to be during his childhood.
And that’s why he believes love doesn’t exist and that he is doomed to solitude. Not because he’s right, but because he’s always running from the pain of his past. No woman he comes across, no project he successfully sells, no competitor he quashes allows him to silence the raging torrent that is the truth of his past. Because it can’t.
The irony of Don Draper’s view of the world is that he is partly correct:
No one else can save us from the travails of our own past.
But finding the courage to stop running means we can seek shelter to protect us while the storm passes. And perhaps we might even find others to take shelter with along the way.
And, once the storm passes, it is up to us to survey the wreckage and start rebuilding. But a funny thing happens when we start to do just that. We see it in every scene of disaster recovery around the world; as we start to rebuild, others join in.
Because one thing we are not alone in is the fact that we’re all facing some form of stormy struggle. You don’t have to have come from a home where your mother sold herself and your father was an abusive alcoholic in order to need shelter with others. What matters is not the ferocity of the storm outside, what matters is your commitment to emerge from it with a desire to rebuild, and to do so with others who - perhaps unbeknownst to you - are rebuilding, too.
Steps to rebuild from your storm:
Identify the storm. Recognising you’re in a storm, or that one might be coming, might just be the first step. What are your behaviours, feelings, or inputs from others that might be the sign that something is brewing?
Stop running. Acknowledge that the storm can’t be outrun.
Look for quiet shelter. Think about ways that you can remove yourself out of the way of the storm. Perhaps that means a change in scenery, or visiting a friend or relative, or simply trying to carve out 5 minutes of a day to be quiet and still for yourself.
Seek others to help you to rebuild. Surveying the damage can be overwhelming and intimidating. It will be up to you to rebuild. But it doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. Finding someone who can listen, really listen, and to talk to - a friend, family member, professional therapist, counsellor or trusted elder in your community - are the building blocks to seeing a different future.
Through Don Draper, a great story was told. He understood the motivations, fears and incentives of others and used that knowledge to create stories that turned him into a great ad-man.
But he never learned to change his own story. He spun stories for others because his own was too scary to confront. But for all it did for others, it left him alone. He wrote his own ending.
What makes us human is not that we are fundamentally alone. What makes us human is our ability to tell stories, and finding the courage to change our own.