Gilligan’s Island: A Study in Abandonment

Gilligan’s Island was one of my all-time favorite shows when I was a child.  That and The Brady Bunch - but we will save that analysis for another episode.

Today in my bath, I was reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott.  In this book, titled “Blue Shoe,” the author was describing the main character’s ex-husband, Nicky.   She writes:

"Nicky was like the shipwrecked Professor on Gilligan’s Island, constantly coming up with ingenious inventions made of foliage, generators made from coconut husks, ice chests made from seashells, yet apparently never getting around to repairing the SS Minnow."

And reading that description immediately took me back to my childhood, in the same strong way that a scent can trigger an old, old memory in a flash.  

I thought back... what was it about that show that kept me coming back week after week?  Each time I tuned in, my child-self hoping that perhaps THIS would be the episode where they are finally rescued and get the fuck off that island!  My child-self not understanding that, should a rescue have happened, that would be the end of it all, including a very important sense of connection I had with these characters.  

Week after week after week, I tuned in – empathizing with what I thought was a shared sense of abandonment.  Abandonment, one of my core karmic issues I have brought with me into this lifetime.  Abandoned at birth, abandoned by two foster families before being placed with the people who would become my parents, my family in this lifetime.  So there I sat, each afternoon, glued to our tiny black and white T.V. screen, wishing, hoping, longing for their salvation, and mine. 

And the Professor, well, what the fuck was HE up to???  He could make generators out of coconut husks, but could not manage to patch a goddamn hole in the side of the boat?  The “Professor.” Most smart folks I know (myself included) long to be the “smartest” of the bunch.  Do you think perhaps the Professor was – intentionally or unintentionally - sabotaging their efforts in order to remain the smartest in the group?  After all, once back to the mainland, he is only one Professor in a sea of Professors, and there is ALWAYS someone smarter than you.  Always. 

The castaways were never actually rescued during the three seasons the sitcom aired, originally from 1964 – 1967.  Apparently, there was to be a fourth season, but the show was cancelled in the 

interim, and the final episode of the third season became the “finale” episode by default, the castaways stranded in perpetuity.  Perhaps in response to consumer outrage over this anti-climactic non-ending, a movie was made nearly 11 years later, titled “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” in which the castaways are finally rescued. I can remember watching this movie, and at the end, feeling a colossal sense of let-down.  It was over.  It was over, and so no longer did I have that shared sense of abandonment with these fictional characters…I was on my own now. 

And now, at almost 46 years old, I am finally coming to terms with this core karmic issue, this, this scary, lonely feeling I call “abandonment.” This sense that I will ultimately wind up a bag lady in Central Park with nobody to love me, nobody to care for me.  And on a good day, I can hold this feeling, that ultimately I am all alone, alongside a knowing, deep inside that none of us are ever all alone.  That we are ALL connected, “all-one,” and that it only takes my willingness to stop, get still, and sit with self that I can re-connect with this truth, and finally, even for just the briefest of moments, feel “safe.”

And then, like a flash, in the very next briefest of moments, my “safety” is gone and I am off and running again, separate from the rest, longing to come back together.  And on it goes, breathe in, breathe out, pause.  Breathe in, breathe out, pause…