I tried out the Douglas Adams-inspired Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on Netflix. I've always loved the quirky irreverence of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and if I remember correctly I also read the Dirk Gently books, back in my youth.
My tastes have clearly changed a little, because even though I thoroughly enjoyed the 4-episode adaptation from 2010, I'm finding this latest ‘interpretation’ a little too off the wall for me.
But there's a line in episode one that had me chuckling away as a real pointer to the inside-out understanding: i.e. how the mind makes totally innocent, but wrong-headed connections between what it thinks of as the ‘outside’ (situations) and the ‘inside’ (how we feel), that it then sets up as a rule… which can go unquestioned, thereby limiting our lives.
They've given one of the characters a completely made up disease, for dramatic purposes. It's called ‘Pararibulitis’ and is described as ‘a nerve disease that causes sufferers to experience vivid, painful hallucinations.’
The character—Amanda—is telling Dirk Gently (who she's just met) all about what happens in her perceptions for her, when she has an attack, and mentions that she rarely leaves the house.
He expresses concern—it sounds like a terrible thing to have to go through—and then I love the total innocence with which he asks this question:
From Season 1, Episode 1 on Netflix
“If the disease is in you… why does it matter where you go?”
He'd make an excellent Innate Health coach, asking dumb-ass questions like that.
😂
Giles
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Giles P Croft
How it all starts.