Issue #193

A Brief Word from Major Briggs

Rebekah and I have been revisiting Twin Peaks, a show we’re both quite fond of. We’re near the end of season two, which means we’re through the weakest material Twin Peaks has to offer. It’s really just that handful of episodes halfway through the second season that start to lose me, after the Laura Palmer mystery has been resolved and before the Windom Earle stuff really kicks into full gear. That stretch where Ben Horne is re-enacting the Civil War, and James is involved in a limp reworking of Double Indemnity, and Andy and Dick are fighting for Lucy’s affection, and Josie is being forced to serve as Catherine’s housemaid, and Agent Cooper is wearing plaid because he’s been demoted from Agent to Deputy, and on and on. You know, that stuff.

But now we’re through all of that, and mostly good to great stuff awaits. The gripping season two finale. The haunting and sharp-edged Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. And particularly the extraordinary third season, Twin Peaks: The Return, which remains the most absorbing TV viewing experience I’ve ever had. The year that it aired, I watched it three times. I haven’t been back to it since, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Anyway. There’s a line from Twin Peaks that’s been resonating with me this time around. Major Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis) is talking to The Log Lady (Catherine Coulson). She notices the array of medals on his military uniform, and asks him if he’s proud of them.

“Achievement is its own reward,” Major Briggs says. “Pride obscures it.”

I was a little surprised by how much that line moved me. Maybe because that sort of quiet humility is something that increasingly feels like an ancient concept, largely abandoned in our age of self-promotion and self-affirmation. Healthy wariness of pride has been shelved, lest it get in the way of the all-important need to maintain self-esteem. And look, self-esteem has its place. But without humility as a counterweight, it becomes arrogance.

We’ve built a modern world that demands we trumpet our own virtues, assert our own value, announce our own worthiness of whatever throne we wish to occupy. Speak up or get left behind. Doing all of that requires that we ditch humility. But when we set aside our humility, we subsequently set aside our ability to feel shame. And when we set aside our ability to feel shame, we lose our ability to hold fast to any standard we may set for ourselves. And then… well, look out the window and see.

Back at ya later