A Chance For Growth on Planet Winchester
Wednesday, 29 December 2010 00:56 | Last Updated on Wednesday, 29 December 2010 01:35 | Written by Jasminka | 
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A Chance for Growth on Planet Winchester
I strongly believe that one of the greatest journeys a human being can undertake is crossing the distance between two people. Especially when that space keeps changing, losing perimeter or becoming almost too vast to even dare to think it might be possible. It is a theme that has been one of the undercurrents of Supernatural from season one. Two men, very much alike but sometimes so painfully distant from each other, losing their way and finding it again.
These two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester have probably been at important a turning point as this one. Not only because of their knowledge of the supernatural, but because they refuse to accept circumstances. It’s a double-edged sword, unfortunately. On the one hand it allows them to question everything from death to fate and fight against it, on the other hand it keeps them imprisoned in a perpetual objection against the forces of nature and the spiritual world – death, God’s will (or whatever one might call it), natural order, etc.
They are unable (for the most part) to accept what every other person without their awareness and tools has to live with – that people die. It’s a heartbreaking fact, but a fact nonetheless. It tears you up like only the loss of a loved one can and leaves you vulnerable to the possible loss of others. Life is often unfair when it comes to that kind of bereavement. And it’s often illogical. It’s easier to understand that the old die when they reach the end of their journey. But how give sense to the passing of a child? A young mother who is killed, never to see her children grow up? A young lover who is taken by drowning, never to return to the woman he loved? A child that dies while still in the womb and isn’t allowed to take even one breath of air? It’s hard to accept. I have myself often wondered – if I had the possibilities and the knowledge these Winchesters have, would I have tried to change the course of life for the people I continue to miss? I would love to exclaim: yes, of course! But, who knows?
What I do know, however, is – that accepting the fact that people die makes it easier, eventually, to go on living. And it allows the pain to ultimately take a back seat.
Sam and Dean still need to learn about the necessity of accepting that. It’s an important part of their journey they will struggle with. Their incapability of taking some circumstances and living with them has proven to be a constant thorn in their sides, precisely because they are so close. In this nearness of their souls lies their pain and their salvation, alike, doesn’t it?
I wonder, in all that mayhem that has been their lives’ melody over the years, have they ever taken a moment to realize that the sheer fact that they are still here and alive might be a visible symbol of invisible grace? A grace I’d like to call closeness of soul, to put it poetically, which has never truly suffered, but remained constant.
It is a very human need, also, to belong to someone. It’s a necessity for our survival. Babies left alone without the security of attachment die. When we grow up, the wish to belong to someone is at the centre of our soul. It gives our lives balance. As long as we feel the warmth this sense of belonging provides, we take it for granted.
Sam and Dean have felt this tight connection for all their lives, as they have been each others’ towers of strength. One always knew that the other was there, no matter what. It saved their lives countless times and continues to do so. I don’t think that this deep alliance has ever been severed. But we have seen the aftermath of those moments when they believed it had been.
Most of all, Dean experienced the loss of that security, when his life’s compass (being the protector of his family, in particular of his brother, an inner law created the moment he carried baby Sammy out of the burning house and fired up by John’s assigning of Dean to be Sam’s guardian) was unsettled – when he lost Sam twice (in All Hell Breaks Loose and Swan Song) and during seasons four and five when he felt Sam had succumbed to the forces of evil and was slipping away from him.
Dean then did not belong anymore. The anchor to his life’s quest and his inner sanctum was gone. We saw what it did to this wonderful man – he became vulnerable to fear and negativity and had trouble keeping his good spirits up. Who wouldn’t?
With Sam it was slightly different, but he also lost (or believed that he had) what he depended on the most in this life after he lost Jessica (before that he had established a healthy distance from his family, pursuing his own goals, finding his own purpose in life) – his brother’s trust and love. After Jessica’s loss all he felt he still had, was the need for revenge and the understanding and comfort coming from his brother. There was the feeling that his father never accepted him as the independent person he was, and Dean probably did by having his back. Just as Dean was proving to dad (even after John’s Death) that he was good at his job and the son he wanted him to be, Sam was trying to prove to be worthy of his brother’s trust by doing what he felt to be right.
Both brothers had no idea where this would lead.
The problem with decisions is – we only can choose by estimating what we feel is right at the very moment we have to make a decision. At this point we have no chance of knowing whether or not our decision will turn out to be right. We have to decide according to our own integrity, our sense of honour, our conscience.
Sam and Dean, both, made decisions that turned out to be disastrous. Unfortunately that wounded their sense of belonging and the closeness their souls were attuned to. As a result we found two brothers at odds with and distanced from each other, but only on the surface. Because – in this established distance (fueled by disappointment, hurt, loss) the deep longing for each other’s nearness has not ceased. On the contrary, it created more pain in their minds.
We need to regulate nearness and distance. It’s vital to our mental state. The moment we try to fixate this dynamic and flexible process (at times we need more distance, then again more closeness) we damage our capability to grow. When we want to keep it the way it is, for example because we feel comfortable with it or want to control it. As a result we create circumstances that make us feel isolated, lonely or excluded (for instance the other, who needs more distance at present, might push us away). And the outcome of that, regrettably, is often more distance. The crocotta in Long Distance Call described it quite accurately – how we think to be so connected and yet are further apart than ever.
Because the connection the crocotta referred to is an external one. It is often associated with an inner connection, too, which it isn’t for the most part. When the outer rules we create lie in ruins, we need to rediscover our deeper means of belonging.
I believe Sam and Dean are at a watershed mark. The deals both made, the decisions they found, the hurt they inflicted upon another have turned out to be too much of quicksand quality to actually build a life on them. There is no stability in their lives. The only constant has always been their inner connection and sense of belonging they need to revive while accepting that both are individuals, on an individual journey and yet with a common purpose. The concept of belonging is also a flexible one. It’s not lasting; it changes its face according to the circumstances of life.
I wish for Sam and Dean to be able to finally embrace their vulnerability to physical and mental pain. And accept that there are unchangeable factors they can’t fight. It would not mean to shed all they gained by fighting on Team Free Will. But it would set them free from the cruel need to alter painful facets at the cost of their own lives, their mutual trust or an increase of fear and irritability. Hopefully that might help them to entirely comprehend that one doesn’t die without the other, that both are independent men, which they basically are.
And then both would be able to grow, instead of repeatedly stepping back to methods of changing reality and/or destiny and thereby diminishing their progress and development. Which would, eventually, enable them to meet each other on eye level, as true equals – allowing them to be closely connected brothers, completing their journey to the other.
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Comments
I hear you...I'm trying to understand it all. I look forward to the day they see eye to eye as equals. I also hope they never have live their life with out the other. In my perfect little world...a girl can dream!
Thanks for this Jas!
I quite agree with many of the things you say.
Concerning their inability to accept things:
I see Sam and Dean as two ordinary people, with quite different personalities, forced into extreme circumstances and reacting to them in kind.
Which is what, among other things of course, makes them attractive to us: They are not so different from us, only their lives are (I´m not counting the demon blood as a part of Sam but as something thrown at him, like everything else), and we can learn from their reactions, from what they do to deal with what is thrown at them.
Life presses in on them in extreme ways, and that pressure needs a reaction, a kind of counterpressure, something to keep the balance: There are only three basic concepts of dealing with pressure, with “problems”: Fighting to change the situation, accepting the situation or fleeing the situation.
Depending on the situation and on them (Sam reacts in very different ways than Dean does) they (as everybody else does) use one or a combination of those strategies, but since their circumstances are extreme, their reactions, no matter which option they choose, must be as extreme to resolve the situation. And this takes its toll, of course it does, a very heavy toll, to the point of making them almost completely dysfunctional at times (Dean, fleeing, and "pushing it down and pushing it down") or even inhuman (Sam, fighting to change his "destiny" by using demon powers)
The fighting is more "vicious", the fleeing more extreme, and acceptance - which I would define as embracing a situation, being open to it, not passively suffering it (suffering it does not solve the problem, it only prolongs it) - harder to come by.
What I´m trying to say is that would e.g. lead to acceptance under ordinary circumstances, is different for them, harder:
Accepting the death of a beloved person is hard for anyone, but for someone whose entire world, everything they define themselves by, consists of that one person, that acceptance entails far more and needs far more growth to accomplish
They have gotten very far already on that path, because they were forced to learn and they have always had the courage to face things and make a stand, something I truly respect and admire them for. Still, they are not there yet, on their way, but not there yet.
And I quite agree with you Jasminka: They have always sustained each other exclusively, kept each other human in every sense of the word. They have done so because for most of their lives there was no one else to do it. Their “confinement” caused them to keep up the roles they had been assigned early in life: dependable big brother and rebellious little brother to start with, and many small things one of them was, in an unspoken way, “responsible” for and that kept their relationship in balance. These roles were flexible enough for “ordinary” use and development and would have worked longer, but their lifestyle caused them to do numerous things not compatible with those roles, until they ceased to work for them altogether, for the time being, and everything shattered.
During those moments they thought they had lost it all, because to them being loved didn´t go beyond that love being a “reward” for adhering to their roles, so losing the roles equated to losing the love.
However, it didn´t turn out that way. They lost almost everything, but something still did remain: That they are brothers and that they love each other, deeply.
As much as it caused them pain to lose their connection on many levels, the comfort that it had given them knowing what the other would do in any given situation and to see them doing it, it gave them something else in return: The ultimate knowledge that when everything else had been stripped away, the powerful bond between them still remained.
There were times when they couldn´t see it, but now they know that it was always there, and that it cannot be broken. By now, there aren´t many things they haven´t done or almost done to each other, and still their bond endured and remained untouched at its core.
So where will they go from here? They will have to rebuild their lives, they will have to find new roles – living a human life automatically means having roles – a new balance with each other, a new kind of everyday relationship. It will be different from before in some ways, and quite similar to before in other ways, and things will happen and life will go on, painful and pleasant as before.
But underneath it all, they will have this bond, this love for each other that does not depend on them playing their roles, and this time around, they know it, and that knowledge will ultimately set them free.
As you said Jasminka, true connection with another soul is maybe one of the ultimate “accomplishments” for a human being. True connection to me is true acceptance, unconditional love, of and for each other and of and for themselves, and, I believe, this will also lead to an ability to accept and love life as it is and embrace the things they can´t change, giving them peace and a hard-earned understanding, I hope.
Thanks again, Jasminka, you always make me think!
thanks Leslie!
I’d like to further extend this observation by noting that when we decide, we are also taking responsibility for that decision. For me, your observation about choice, about choosing as always estimating, exposes a basic premise in Supernatural: Free Will v. Fate. The ability to make a choice accompanies the responsibility of that choice, a lesson that the brothers encounter time and again but did not fully internalize until season 5. I think the narrative of vengeance, which preoccupied Sam for seasons 1-4, is the twin brother to Fate. Vengeance is the silent acknowledgement of destiny, since revenge embodies the extreme reaction to (and action against) powerlessness, which is the hallmark trait of fate. So if they have moved past vengeance, they have grown.
I very much agree with your post, especially with the part about vengeance being the twin brother to Fate and the silent acknowledgement of destiny.
It has never made sense to me that it should be Sam pursuing vengenance in this manner, he does not strike me as a vengeful person at all.
However, vengenance as the only way left to him to fight his "destiny" that he saw - since he did not want to accept - makes a lot more sense. And it´s true, fighting in this manner bound him to the very events and circumstances he was fighting far more closely than anything else could have.
And I do think they have moved past that, and grown.
Very interesting comparison. I would even go further than that. Vengeance is only one of the things that will turn you into someone who acts like a soulless being. The source, so to speak, I think is being driven, allowing yourself to be controlled, never stepping back, making no true, active decisions. It does not have to be vengeance, it could also be zeal, a crusade, anything that would make a person allow themselves to be destructive, to commit acts they actually believe to be wrong for the sake of some goal that supposedly sanctifies or at least justifies the action. Revenge is only one of them, zeal in many forms, terrorism, are different versions of the same kind of path, and you´re right, they are not actions, they are desperate reactions to powerlessness, and yes, allowing yourself to be controlled like that comes very close to losing yourself, losing your core, losing your way. You can´t actually lose your soul I think, but you sure can make it look as if you had. So Sam, when he had lost himself in his pursuit of revenge and in his zeal to be the one to end it all did things that were quite similar to SoullessSam´s actions.
Which is interesting, because his actions as almostDemonSam were caused by an overflow of negative emotions, anger, to be precise, completely flooding the empathy he still possessed at that point, whereas those as RoboSam were mainly caused by a complete lack of positive emotions (unless you want to count his appreciation of sex and food), so the few shallow emotions he did have, direct instinctive reactions to situations directly relating to his immediate well-being, were enough to produce the same result.
So it seems to be about balance, balancing your emotions, and having a soul allows you to do that, if you choose to do it. Sam when he had no soul couldn´t control what little emotions he had, and Sam when he did have a soul, allowed that control to be taken away from him, and the result was quite similar.
As I said, very interesting comparison, bookdal.
Mystery Spot is actually one of my favorite episodes, I think it´s one of the best. Still, the more I watch it, the more unbearable Sam´s ordeal there becomes to me.
I think that in many ways what happened after Wednesday paved the way for Ruby and the slippery downward slope, not only because, for the first time, he was completely and truly broken, but also because after Dean went to hell and he started things with Ruby, he deluded himself into believing that this time around, unlike after Wednesday, he didn´t just do it for revenge but that he was actually doing good, that this time was different (this is never mentioned I know, but I´m sure he thought about those months and made the comparison).
The result was still the same, he came close to losing his humanity, so the fact that he really did do some good, saved many people, could not prevent the damage it did to his soul. Him being driven like this damaged him.
I see Dean as different. You´re right about the torture scene, but still revenge is not that much of an issue to him. Apparently his main reaction to powerlessness is, again, "pushing it down and pushing it down" ("flight", in a way) as long as he can. In a way it works, but in fact, in the long run, it can be as damaging as Sam´s more visible reaction.
Whenever things can still be changed for the better, they try to do just that, with integrity and courage.
What Sam did in Season 4 was actually a mixture of those two: In specific situations he tried to do good, the way he always had, still using his compass, but all that was overshadowed by him raging against his "destiny" and blinded by his need for power to end the feelings of helplessness and despair, the very source of his thirst for revenge, as I see it.
One of the first signs that Sam was changed after coming back from hell, was his indifference to Dean's grief. Having gone through this twice before himself, Sam knew all too well what this was like. Grief like that could not be outweighed by finally living a "normal" life with Lisa and Ben. Also, Sam would have known that, having experienced hell himself, Dean could never be at peace with Sam being unfairly condemned there.
On a side note, perhaps they fight so hard to change the circumstances because they know that the other one is in hell. They know the reality of heaven. Death would still bring a lot of grief, but maybe it would be more liveable if they knew the other one was really okay.
I’m with you on wishing they will accept their vulnerability. Especially to death. No one, NO ONE, should go through life having their one absolute be another person. To place a person over the certainty of death? There is nothing healthy in that. Disturbing actually. How has this not bothered me so much before? I mean, ya, it was bad they made the deals, but in this light…those poor boys. It is no wonder their relationship has deteriorated. And it is no wonder they are so desperate to give so much to keep the other around. What a messed up way to live one’s life. I’m so very thankful that this is just a tv show! Which may sound odd, but how terribly awful it would be if there were actually two people out there whose entire faith centered around keeping the other alive. I’m seeing Dean’s ability to ‘allow’ Sam to jump in that hole in a fresh, and more hopeful, light.
Ok, I’ll stop ramble/reacting. Thanks for the article Jas. Made me think new thoughts about this wonderful show.
Love, take care, Jas
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