jude folly

menacing, slithering beneath dark waters, wielding a tidal force. The thought occurred to me as I absorbed the news that the private equity firm I work for was letting me go. Having paid close attention to the dismal job market news and the whithering US economy, at least the event of my dismissal wouldn’t shock me, I reasoned all along; and it didn’t.

Still, I gave in to moments of panic as I considered how to rearrange my financial obligations and wondered what kind of severance I might count on. Being aware of the growing masses of the unemployed, I admit, gins up the fear. I couldn’t imagine there being much of any comfort in numbers, especially such figures compared over and over again in superlative terms to the Great Depression.

While I experienced the physical sensation of dread, I imagined a squid’s inky cloud billowing through my innards. How useful it’s been to conjure or project images for the anxiety that can rear up suddenly.

Of course, I’ve not yet been turned loose and and have yet to endure the peril of depleting funds and diminishing job prospects.  I know that whatever happens it will be in my best interest not to panic. It requires committing self-affirming belief to a situation I don’t fully understand in the heat of its unfolding.

A new politico-economic order is emerging that we have yet to see fully manifested. I am grateful for times like this that expose the American myth of the independent, self-sustaining individual. Since our economy has evolved into an intertwining entity that binds most of our financial destinies together, it stands to reason that we learn to lean on one another, at the very least for ideas, encouragement and hope.

Now that this scandal has been beat to pulp, we should move the conversation beyond any further details of the South Carolina governor’s infidelity and skip the talk about his mental well being.

The particulars of the story bear a striking resemblance to a novel called Damage (by Irish writer Josephine Hart), a tale narrated by an unnamed protagonist – an English physician and up-and-coming Member of Parliament – who, by all appearances, had possession of a wonderful life. Like Mark Sanford, his rise to prominance as a capable and admired elected leader inspired talk of his potential as a head of the nation.

The novel’s opening passage presents themes about the human condition – what I would liken to pangs of an undernourished soul - that play out with dreadfully regrettable effect.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. . . .

For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. . . .

And in my own life, I have traveled far, acquiring loved and unfamiliar companions: a wife, a son, and a daughter. I have lived with them, a loving alien. . . . and tried to be what those I loved expected me to be – a good husband, a good father, a good son.

Had I died at fifty I would have been a doctor, and an established politician . . . . One who had made a contribution, and was much loved. . . .

But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now, who do not regard that as a tragedy.

The promising politician finds his ‘imprint’ in a dark, mysterious young woman (French, of course, for full fatalistic effect) who happens to be his grown son’s romantic companion. As if powerless against the collision of greater forces, they commence an affair whose calamitous arc ends with the death of his son.

While the Mark Sanford saga doesn’t feature a taboo element like incest, judging from the weepy press conference he held to admit that he had cheated, and from the emails he exchanged with his lover, the affair was no frivolous fling. At the risk of implying that Gov. Sanford’s behavior should be excused, I think it worth considering that, like the novel’s central character, the magnitude of his misdeeds reflects a great spiritual longing or hunger of the soul; requiring a moral catastrophe proportional to the unfettered becoming (or metaphysical fulfillment) that contemporary culture has few resources to accommodate.

Well, then he should not have sought public office, would be the common sensical response. True; and I would observe that in order to serve our republic, we require candidates to submit to somewhat extreme contortions of image and soul in order to appeal to a rule of the majority.

Yet how easy it is to disparage elected officials for the chameleon qualities they adopt and not recognize our complicity in the compulsive ‘costume’ changes (a.k.a. flip flopping) politicians must make to remain politically relevant. Yes, voters play a significant role in all this madness – though in Mark Sanford we witness the implosion of one political career that could not conceal the impassioned, vulnerable and utterly human qualities that far too many in the United States would prefer to deny about themselves.

Adulterers or not, absconders of duty or not, we are Mark Sanford.