Just over a year ago, I started to watch the award-winning AMC drama, "Mad Men." What initially drew me in was the overwhelmingly accurate depictions of the 196’s and 70s era ad agency, in all of its chain-smoking, avocado-colored, randy innuendo-strewn glory.
I admit that it was probably the perfect, French-cuffed shirts and the hair parts that would make Moses’ parting the Red Sea look messy, that captured my attention. Nonetheless, it was the on-going, inner anguish of the character Donald Draper, a man that had life by balls that kept me longing for the next episode.
Don Draper may seem to the “three episode binge-watcher,” as an adulterous, arrogant prick with no regard for the feelings of others. Nevertheless, to the seasoned "Mad Men" fanboy (this guy), he is a complicated man with a difficult past. His character is a man that never had role models of a happy lifestyle, instead emotionally and physically abusive guardians often focused on purely carnal pleasures.
With no real understanding of traditional morals and values, societal norms are not normal for him; one of his most recognized quotes that illustrate his understanding of happiness is, “What’s happiness? It’s the moment before you need more happiness.”
The inner struggle can be so vexing and hard to understand for the person going through it, that it is much harder for someone outside to comprehend any individual’s struggles, but his or her own. I think that might be why psychiatrists can charge so much.
The lesson gleaned from his complicated life is that a man still in his 40s can have no idea where or what he’s doing, or what he truly wants to find happiness. This may come as a bit of a sore subject to many because (and I speak to millennials right now) it seems like our lives need to be laid out perfectly and wrapped up in a little bow.
We need to own up to our decisions and make sure everything is going to work out perfectly. I used to think that the cliché depiction of the Ivy-League, Trust Fund children was something Hollywood cooked up for television series. It seems as though, at any respectable university, students are instructed and urged to make perfect lives out of less than perfect circumstances or grades for that matter.
However, what is so great about Don Draper’s story? It is perfectly natural to screw up, make a mistake and become lost. Life is a ridiculous safari and I say safari because it seems like there is always a chance that some Lion is going to carry you off into the bush with no intention of bringing you back. We are blessed with opposition, harsh realities and an ever-changing mind that does not always know what it wants.
