Allen Rucker

We are so proud to have Allen as a regular contributor to the TMA Journal.  Allen contracted TM in 1996 at the age of 51 and was paralyzed from the attack at the T-10 level.  Allen recently published a memoir about his life after getting TM; “The Best Seat in the House” is now available in paperback.  As his memoir so brilliantly conveys, Allen is on a journey.  That journey has taken Allen into a life as a speaker and an advocate for the transverse myelitis and disability communities.  Through his many speaking engagements, his appearance on the Montel Williams Show, and as a contributing writer for ABILITY and New Mobility Magazines, Allen is raising awareness about transverse myelitis.    

Allen Rucker has an MA in Communication from Stanford University, an MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English from Washington University, St. Louis.  He is the author or co-author of eleven books of humor and non-fiction. “The Sopranos Family Cookbook,” one of three books he’s written about the Sopranos, was a New York Times #1 bestseller.

As a TV writer-producer, he co-founded the experimental video group, TVTV, and has written numerous network specials, documentaries, and teleplays, including the award-winning cable series, “The History of White People in America,” with Martin Mull. 
He is the recipient of the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award; two Writers Guild Awards, including one for career distinction as a writer with a disability; two CableACE Awards; and two retrospectives at the Paley Center for Media. He is a contributing editor to "New Mobility" magazine, the chair of the WGA Writers with Disabilities Committee, and a frequent public speaker. He lives in LA with his wife, Ann-Marie. They have two sons.

Photo of Allen

The Illusion of Control
Allen Rucker
 

How much does chance rule our lives?  How much does a mysterious confluence of forces that we don’t know about, can’t anticipate, and have no control over actually dictate how we live?

The answer: probably much, much more than any of us realize.

This is the subject of a fascinating book of a year ago called, “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” by a Cal Tech physicist and excellent narrative writer named Leonard Mlodinow. The book uses both real-life anecdotes and the science of probability to argue that, “a lot of what happens to us…is as much the result of random factors as the result of skill, preparedness, or hard work.” One reasonably talented actor, for instance, comes to Hollywood, works his tail off for years, and never makes it past a guest role as a dope dealer on “Law and Order.” Another reasonably talented actor stumbles into the right audition at the right time and becomes Bruce Willis. We all think that actor #1 is a near-failure because “he didn’t have what it takes” and that Bruce Willis must be extraordinarily talented or determined or something to rise so high. We think that Mr. Willis simply took control of his life and made stardom happen.

This is what Mlodinow pegs as “the illusion of control,” an illusion we all practice every day in our own lives. He quotes Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer to the effect that, “while people may pay lip service to the concept of chance, they behave as though chance events are subject to control.” This is especially true when viewing things in retrospect and when we are assessing our own lives. When things go wrong, in other words, we blame ourselves. We messed up. We should have worked harder, taken more risk, taken less risk, gone to grad school, not gone to grad school – we create a litany of our own bone-headed missteps and failed expectations to explain our lives.  

It’s tough to give Chance its due. We love to think things happen for a reason, as in, “Everything happens for a reason, you know,” and when we can’t come up with one, we often look up and either praise or blame G-d Almighty. Embracing the idea of randomness seems like a cop-out, a ready answer for any failure or shortcoming. “Hey, I didn’t pick my mother! She was a whiny, controlling you-know-what before I came along!” To simply say that “s**t happens” is the siren cry of the perpetual loser, a person incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions and their consequences.

And we extend our need for hard answers to the rest of the world. When we see someone else downed by life, like poor people, we intuitively connect their poverty with something they did or didn’t do. Our almost patriotic belief that we all can control our own destiny leads to some awful slurs. “Why don’t they just get a job? Learn English? Go to college? Move to a better neighborhood?”

When I was first diagnosed with TM thirteen years ago and gently told I was paralyzed for good, I knew it was something I had brought on myself. I knew there was a pattern of behavior, or thinking, or both, that had opened the door for TM to come strolling through. I mean, really, how could something as nebulous as “chance” or “bad luck” deal me such a low blow? It seemed so impersonal and so cruel.  It was more pathetic than tragic. It made me feel like that poor random house fly that the school kid decides to pull the wings off of.  There is a definite explanation here – the callous school kid -- but the fly doesn’t know that.  To him it’s just a simple, life-ending twist of fate.

The Western-trained doctors treating me generally scoffed at the notion that I was in any way responsible for contracting TM, but a Chinese acupuncturist clearly saw a deep-seated karmic pattern. He said that, upon examining my broken body, that I had “too much wind and too much wetness.” This meant, in his view, that I had not let my immune system function properly – I never allowed myself to get sick, for instance – and my system finally snapped, as it were, and caused the paralysis. Self-induced stress, in other words, is what brought this on.

Emotionally, I tend to believe that to this day. It gives me something to hang on to. I wasn’t just a bug that flew into the fast moving windshield of life. I played some part in this drama. But, unfortunately, there is no scientific basis to this notion that I know of. And if stress played a factor, there was still a lot of randomness involved. There are a lot of stressed-out people out there and most end up with an ulcer or a drinking problem. Few end up wheeling to work.

I pray that, some day, the people at Johns Hopkins or elsewhere will link TM to something observable and definable – elevated IL-6 antigen levels, or an errant genetic marker, or a traumatic stress reaction, or too much pork fat in the diet – so I could close the book on an explanation and hopefully, remove my own character flaws from the equation. But, most likely, until that happens, I will keep trying to find the “real reason” I’m paralyzed, invariably something I invited and could have avoided.  

But I’m working on giving Chance a chance, and I’ve found that it if you take it seriously as at least a contributing factor in your life, it can be liberating.  For one thing, it’s ego-deflating, and that’s a good thing. You don’t yell “Why me!?” every time something bad happens and you don’t think you are the king of the world and become an insufferable bore when good fortune comes your way. “You know why they made me Salesman of the Year? I’ll tell you why they made me Salesman of the Year…” You’ll be less quick to judge others for their perceived failings. You learn humility.

As you begin to see that your malady is an unfortunate biological blimp, and not a punishment for past sins or a true reflection of who “you” are, you tend to give it much less weight in your life. It is no more a precursor or determiner of your life ahead than male-pattern baldness or thick ankles. You are as free to invent your future life in a wheelchair, and roll with all the turns of fortune and misfortune, as you are on two good legs.  And keep in mind, if chance played a role in the TM, it probably also lead to some of the many good things in your life – your family, friends, and even the TMA community who is there to support you.

Chance or no chance, you are still responsible for how you deal with your own circumstances, like tending to your own health, both physical and mental.  And Mlodinow of “The Drunkard’s Walk” sees the way to move ahead. “One important factor in success,” he says, “is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities.” In other words, if you continue engaging with the world, the odds are that something will eventually mesh in some magical way and being in a wheelchair or otherwise impaired will become an afterthought in your life and not the focus.