A Story For Our Time

The clash of two cultures
The initial emphasis of the film is on the extraordinary story of Stephen Hawking but gradually the emphasis shifts to include two other extraordinary people. These two are Stephen’s first wife Jane and Jonathan Hellyer Jones with whom she developed a profound friendship and later married in 1995 when Stephen had left her to marry someone else. Where the film is ostensibly about Stephen Hawking, I would agree with Tara Brady who, in her review of the film in The Ticket, says, “In The Theory of Everything Hawking’s condition is rather less important than how it affects his marriage. It is Jane who conveys the changing marital chemistry – care, dependence, resentment, and exasperation – in small, delicate motions. This is not a brief history of time; it is a brief history of love. And it is as complex and deceptively deep as any of the physics covered in Hawking’s books.” Even though she married someone who lived most of his life “in the mind alone” she never ceased to “think in a marrow-bone”. The film has a lot to say about this clash between two cultures that W B Yeats highlights in this poem.

A Prayer for Old Age
GOD guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song’s sake a fool?

I pray – for word is out
And prayer comes round again –
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.
W.B. Yeats

 Opposites that attract
Jane met Stephen in Cambridge University in 1963 when she was an undergraduate studying Literature and he was doing his doctorate in Cosmology. Shortly after they met he developed Motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. In spite of Stephen’s efforts to end their relationship Jane insisted on marrying him and did so in 1965. For the next 25 years they battled with his gradual deteriorating condition in a way that was truly heroic.

 They had three children and the strain of looking after these as well as coping with the increasing demands of Stephen’s growing disability led to her parents insisting that she employ professional help. This complicated their relationship for Stephen resisted anything that interfered with his life at the university where he worked. The relationship was further complicated by Stephen’s growing attachment to one of these helpers called Elaine Mason. This eventually led to Stephen wanting a separation from Jane so that he could marry Elaine. When he did, his family felt they were cut off from Stephen because Elaine was so protective and possessive of him.

 When Jane was divorced from Stephen in 1995 she married Jonathan with whom she had a platonic relationship for many years. He was accepted as a friend of the family as Stephen had no difficulty with this relationship as long as it did not interfere with his own relationship with Jane. When Stephen’s marriage to Elaine Mason ended in 2006 he re-established a close relationship with his family.

Where the journey began as an impossible challenge

A history of how love develops
For me The Theory of Everything is a love story that centres on Jane’s immense capacity for love in the profound relationship she had with two utterly different men. Her relationship with Stephan over the 25 years she was married to him went through all the stages of such a long-term relationship: It began with the charming infatuation of these two very gifted young students and then to their commitment to marry. There followed the years of caring and being cared for when we become aware how affliction for many years refined their relationship but how it eventually consumed it. We witness how his growing dependence affects both of them, how it leads them to question their capacity to handle the resentment and frustration of having their lives more and more confined by his growing disability. In all of this a heroism emerges that manifests itself very differently in these two people who personify two such different worlds.

Two utterly different people
The relationship between Stephen and Jane was an intriguing one from the time they first met when students at Cambridge University. Their backgrounds were very different. Stephen’s parents were very intellectual and related in a very detached way. At meals both his parents read a book rather than talking to each other. Jane on the other hand came from a family who were always deeply involved in her life. Their spiritual stance was also very different: where she was a committed member of the Church of England all her life he had little time for Religion and eventually became one of England’s best known atheists. A deeper difference still was in their whole approach to life: her main quest was love and relationships while his was a single-minded devotion to his work as a scientist.

How adversity can refine or overwhelm a relationship
With such differences separating them you would wonder what kept them together. Adding to these forces driving them apart was the amount of hardship and adversity his gradual deterioration from Motor neurone disease imposed on their relationship. They married in the belief that he had only two years to live. When in fact his decline was much slower than expected they were both charmed with this though gradually the strain of facing an endless stream of curtailments of their freedom took its toll. As is to be expected he resisted, often obstinately, becoming confined in these ways, for example, he doggedly resisted being confined to a wheelchair in the late 60s. But even though he was for a time frustrated by these curtailments of his freedom he was not depressed by them for long as his determination and humour triumphed every time. It is to emphasize his indomitable human spirit that the film begins and ends with an image in gold of Stephen in his wheelchair but also as a little boy cheerfully skipping along in front of his parents.

The second man
Another remarkable person in the film is Jonathan whom Jane met in 1977. He was the organist and choir director in her local church and Jane met him when she joined the choir there. There was an immediate harmony between them. He wife had recently died from leukemia and Jane felt the need to find a let-up from an excessively demanding life. It was an extraordinary relationship in that there was a great sensitivity for each others commitments as well as needs, especially of their shared need of friendship. According to Jane, her husband was accepting of the situation, stating “he would not object so long as I continued to love him”. Jane and Jonathan were determined not to break up the family and their relationship remained platonic for a long period. Then in 1995 when Stephen divorced Jane she married Jonathan.

A rich tapestry of relationships
Jane’s relationship with two very different men, so that neither of them as a result suffered, is extraordinary. Jonathan was more a soul mate or a friend that she needed as a huge part of her was not engaged in Stephen’s world. Where Stephen personified an exclusive humanism and its preference for the disengaged reason that Science cultivates, Jonathan personified a more holistic humanism that centred on love and relationships.

Stephan had an immediate appeal for Jane when she first met him and was charmed by his childlike single-mindedness and simplicity as well as by his mischievous humour. He was admirable in the heroic way he wrestled with his disease and with the increasing way it confined or imprisoned him. We understand why he takes his frustration and his feelings of aggression out on her as we do her growing sense of resentment and frustration with the huge demands that his growing limitations as well as his growing dependence on her imposes. It is a dependence he resents and he expresses this in his defiance of her best efforts to get him to express himself after his tracheotomy. It was then that Elaine Mason stepped into his life with the professional skills and the charm to help him break through to a new way of expressing himself. As a result, he became infatuated by her at a time when he and Jane had become exhausted by their strained relationship. It was then that he decided he wanted a separation and eventually a divorce from Jane.

It’s the story that matters
When I see a film like The Theory Of Everything what matters most to me is the story it tells, especially if it moves me in some way. Other things about the film, such as who directed it and what films he or she has already produced, are peripheral. Now, what moved me about The Theory Of Everything was how it portrayed two ways of seeing life and what is important that vie for our allegiance today. The choice is imaged in the following story about a dream merchant.

The Dream Merchant 
Nick is employed by a multinational company as a dream merchant. He spends his day getting people to trade in their deep dream for more superficial ones. The reason why his company employ Nick to do this work is they realise that when people focus on their deep dream they are bad for business as they have little or no desire for what this multinational wants to sell them. If on the other hand people can be persuaded to focus on their superficial dreams they will be ready to spend their lives working to get the money they need to buy what Nick’s company wants to sell them. They will be open to an endless stream of desires which can be manipulated by the company at will.

Sometimes Nick is a little uneasy about the work he does, for he notices that when he buys people’s deep dream, something dies within them. What sooths his misgivings, however, is that most people are only too willing to do business with him. They obviously find their deep dream too difficult to maintain and are glad to be freed from its demands.

This story highlights an issue central to The Theory of Everything and this is the choice we are faced with today between two cultures that compete for our allegiance. One of these cultural viewpoints is that adopted by Stephen the other by Jane and Jonathan. What Stephen is passionate about is Science or more specifically Cosmology and how he can grow in understanding of the material and measurable world. Jane and Jonathan on the other hand viewed the world from the point of view of love and relationships. These two ways of seeing life were accompanied by two ways of attaining it. Where Stephan approaches his world through disengaged reason, Jane and Jonathan approach theirs in a way that engages their whole person, their memory and imagination and how these in turn engage their heart and soul, mind and senses.

In his book called, The Turning Point, Fritjof Capra cites the opinion of the R D Laing, that nothing has changed our world more during the last four hundred years, than the obsession of scientists with measurement and the material. This obsession has dominated, diminished and distorted our inner world which as a result is seen as unreal, irrelevant and even as abnormal. This distorted vision of our inner world leads to a spiritual repression and a self-alienation that has devastated our capacity to enter the relationships which are necessary for a normal healthy life. He quotes the well-known Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing who says that as a result of Science’s stance towards our everyday experience:

Out go sight, sound, taste, touch and smell and along with them has since gone aesthetics and ethics, sensibility, values, quality, form; all feelings, motives, intentions, soul, consciousness, spirit. Experience as such is cast out of the realm of scientific discourse. (The Voice of Experience – R D Laing)

A revolutionary choice
The Theory of Everything then is about a momentous choice which faces each of us today, one that I have written about in a book called, The Quiet Revolution. The choice is between two cultures, each of which is bidding for our allegiance and each of which proposes its own distinctive vision, value system and lifestyle. One culture sees and values the world in terms of love and relationships, while the other, that has its origins in Science and Economics, sees and values everything in material and monetary terms. This latter vision and value system is the dominant one today and, since it has little time for the inner world of love and relationships, it leaves a spiritual vacuum at the heart of society. It leads, according to R D Laing, to a lot of confusion about what is real, relevant and “normal”

“… the condition of alienation, of being asleep, unconscious, ‘out of one’s mind,’ is the condition of the normal person. Such ‘normally’ alienated men and women are taken to be sane”, says Laing, “simply because they act more or less like anyone else, whereas other forms of alienation, which are out of step with the prevailing one are labelled psychotic by the ‘normal’ majority”. (The Voice of Experience – R D Laing)

In this cultural atmosphere we live in today it is difficult to give to our relationships with God, with our inner self, with others and with all creation, the time, energy and resources they deserve. To do so would involve a radical change of mind and heart and developing the art of prayer and reflection we need to do this. Because of our unwillingness to make space in our lives for this we live in circumstances that William Wordsworth lamented in the following lines:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Where Jesus would have us find life
There is no doubt as to where Jesus would have us find life in all it abundance. For him life is all about getting our whole person, body, soul, heart and mind involved in the way we love and relate. He would agree with the view of Hillarie Belloc:

There’s nothing worth the wear of winning
But laughter and the love of friends.

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus, “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” Luke 10:25-28

At the end of his life Jesus left us with his version of this commandment and it puts the emphasis, not so much on our love for God as on God’s love for us. This is the love that Jesus expresses in human terms in every Gospel story. It is an overwhelming love that takes the form of a friendship in which Jesus shares with us “everything” he, his Father and their Spirit have and are.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. John 15:12-15