“Nemesis required. Six-month project with possibility to extend.
“I’ve been trying to think of ways to spice up my life. I’m 35 years old,
happily married with two kids and I have a good job in insurance. But
something's missing. I feel like I’m old before my time. I need to inject
some excitement into my daily routine before it’s too late. I need a
challenge, something to get the adrenaline pumping again. An addiction would
be nice but, in short, I need a nemesis.
“I’m willing to pay $350 upfront for your services as an arch enemy over
the next six months. Nothing crazy. Steal my parking space, knock my coffee
over, trip me when I'm running to catch the bus and occasionally whisper in
my ear, ‘Aha, we meet again’. That kind of thing. Just keep me on my toes.
Complacency will be the death of me. You need to have an evil streak and be
blessed with innate guile and cunning. You should also be adept at
inconspicuous pursuit. Evil laugh preferred. Send me a photo and a brief
explanation why you would be a good nemesis. British accent preferred.”
As a psychologist, I like to think I know quite a bit about what stirs the
human psyche – but that was until I read this recent posting on Craigslist,
a website for classified ads. Could it really be life-enhancing to hire a
personal enemy, primed to cause fear and discomfort at unpredictable
moments?
By coincidence, just before I read that listing, a pal had told me about an
even more extreme version of life-spicing. The scenario went like this:
perfectly upright citizens were being invited to hire a gang of
“kidnappers”, who would appear on the street without warning, bundle them
into a van and “hold them to ransom”. Everyone participating in this
apparently violent and criminal public act would be at risk because it could
easily go wrong. Why, I wondered, would anyone in their right mind want to
be a kidnapper or a victim?
Then friends told me about a bank manager who pays good money to be dropped
into the middle of Alaska and left there to commune with wild bears. And I
heard about a legal secretary who saved for two years to fly to Russia for a
bit of cosmonaut training, followed by a zero-gravity flight in an IL-76MDK
airjet. “Extreme kicks” seemed to be in the zeitgeist – but why?
Shortly after, I was morosely pounding the streets of Manhattan’s East Village
still ruminating. I had just concluded the common denominator was probably
boredom, when I came close to being hit by a fishmonger’s van sporting the
slogan “Meat without feet” (that’s how New Yorkers are being persuaded to
deviate from pastrami).
After the jolt of fear, the adrenaline rush, the near-death experience, I
noticed a distinct upward surge in my mood. For the rest of the day, I
laughed more easily, had more energy and called to accept a party invitation
I had previously declined.
Now, I know all about the euphoria-inducing endorphins that are released after
a painful shock or a moment of fight-or-flight – but I think they were only
part of the reason I experienced such a rush.
As a psychologist, I’m in the business of helping people feel safer – at least
psychologically. But is this what everyone wants? As I thought about certain
aspects of life in western society – still affluent despite the financial
downturn – I began to question my own beliefs and methodology. And in the
end I came to a surprising conclusion: for some people nowadays the idea of
feeling consistently safe is very overrated.
Not only that, but I realised I actually had something in common with the
“nem-esis-seeker” who wanted to be scared witless. Take my scuba-diving trip
to the Caribbean in June, when I decided to eschew my usual coral-viewing
dive in favour of a shark encounter. For this ecologically controversial
experience, divers leap into waters infested with enormous reef sharks and
watch while a feeding frenzy occurs within inches of their noses.
“If you need to clear your mask,” our instructor told us, “slowly bring your
hands up close to your body. Don’t make any sudden movements.” It’s not that
easy to remain still while kneeling on the floor of the ocean, even for
those with good buoyancy skills. “If you find yourself toppling over,”
continued the guide, “don’t put your hand out to stop yourself. Just let
yourself fall over and one of us guys wearing chain-mail will come over and
pick you up.”
“What?” I wanted to scream. “Some of you will be steel-protected? What about
the rest of us?” But I controlled my anxiety and knelt, clinging to my buddy
while the chum-lured, toothy monsters thrashed all around, almost brushing
us. My prefrontal cortex kept reminding me that I was unlikely to be eaten;
after all, on past dives, I’ve been in the vicinity of enough reef sharks to
be quite sure that humans are not their preferred food. But I was petrified
they’d accidentally gash me, puncture my breathing equipment or smack me
with their fins. And logic fails to restore a normal heart rate when you’re
eyeball to eyeball with a mega munching machine.
A month before that shockingly close encounter, I’d travelled to Belize to
dive with the fabulous 50ft whale sharks that emerge from their usual
hunting grounds at 600ft during only three full moons per year to feed on
snapper spawn. Although diving with these sharks is challenging, the
creatures themselves are pretty benign so I took a detour to experience one
of the late Jacques Cousteau’s favourite dive sites – a risky and rapid
plummet to a gloomy cavern right on the depth limits for recreational
diving. To avoid decompression illness, you need to execute a painfully slow
ascent – while keeping a wary eye out for aggressive bull sharks.
Discovering later that what I’d thought were bull sharks were actually
pregnant reef sharks mattered little in the scheme of things. In the
aftermath of the dive, I was at first chunderous with fearful imaginings,
then elated to have survived both the creatures and the dodgy dive itself.
Then there was that phase I went through a few years ago when I went to a
paramilitary academy to learn how to shoot Glocks and AK47s – in preparation
for a death-defying trip into pirate-infested waters. Okay, a pattern is
emerging. But given all this, you’d expect me to like roller-coasters and
scary movies, and I don’t.
No, “nemesis-seeker” and I do not fall into the usual “adrenaline-junkie”
category. Some people attempt to self-medicate chronic depression with
skydiving, bungee jumping, even stand-up comedy – but that’s certainly not
my style.
So what’s my true motivation? Do I feel trapped in my bourgeois lifestyle,
desperate to break out? Am I playing out my own perverse Chekhovian fantasy
in which I’m wandering about as Masha – flopping over garden furniture one
minute and expressing my ennui by reliving Jaws the next?
I suspect my attraction to extreme experiences is becoming particularly common
in a certain stratum of society – and it’s not simply a matter of
thrill-seeking for its own sake. Instead it’s partly related to the
confrontation with mortality that comes with age – so that deliberately
cheating death becomes life-affirming and creates the illusion of having
control over your ultimate demise.
Perhaps it is also connected with the guilt that comes with being blessed with
a cushy life (I bet Iraqis are devoid of such cravings) – it’s a sort of
reverse payback inflicted on yourself to ward off the imagined consequences
of success. In some cultures people wear “evil eye” symbols to protect them
from the consequences of envy – and frankly in my case that would be a lot
easier to achieve.
Then there’s the romantic, existential view that escape (in the sense of
taking a break from a relatively easy life) is the only way to stay truly
alive. During discussions with patients who’ve had extramarital affairs I
did begin to wonder if, for some of them, the impetus was not so much about
having hot sex as about experiencing the dubious thrills and panic that go
hand in hand with sneaking around.
Perhaps that explains why affairs are so common among otherwise stable people.
Perhaps that’s one reason why thousands of apparently staid men and women
secretly belong to outrageous sex/fetish clubs and break out the leather
gear on weekends.
In my clinical practice, I’ve seen evidence that many people (unconsciously)
want to see themselves as buccaneers, renegades, explorers and lovers –
fantasies that are way beyond Walter Mitty daydreams. Edgy and adventurous
characters – such as Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and especially those quirky,
superpowered heroes like Batman who have ordinary alter egos – seem to have
assumed archetypal status in our collective unconscious, to the point where
few of us would consider it a compliment to be seen as normal and safe.
Rising to challenges is known to enhance self-esteem, so extreme
adventure-seeking may well be a healthy pastime. Evolutionary psychologists
have even theorised that, since early human beings experienced adventures as
part of daily living, our need for them is hard-wired into our psyches.
Whatever the reason, I know that I’m by no means the only one who goes to
great lengths to scare her own pants off. The elite travel company
Abercrombie & Kent will soon be offering “extreme” luxury trips (rides
in fighter planes, gallops across the Kalahari) for up to £22,000 per
person. And I’m guessing that those who sign up for them will be every bit
as unlikely as I am (middle aged, responsible, serious career).
Psychologically, courting death is a complicated business – but to a spoilt
baby boomer like me it may just go with the territory. Maybe I should answer
the Craigslist ad myself . . . nah, that’s a little too tame. Hey, I just
saw a website for cage diving with great white sharks off the coast of
Guadalupe. Sounds like a plan.
