There is nothing in Fight Club that isn't in Buddhism. It's a modern Western allegory for core Buddhist concepts, not unlike The Razor's Edge was in the early part of the 20th century. In fact if you look at the key themes of both The Razor's Edge and Fight Club, you'll find more similarities than differences. Chief among them is: "Only after you've lost everything, are you free to do anything."
That's an easy thing to agree with on the surface. Hmm, yeah, sure, if I give up all of my nice things, I can achieve some kind of deep happiness. Only reason I'm not doing it is, I just don't feel like it. Right? Anyone who's studied these concepts, or gotten the meaning behind this literature is aware that you can't be truly happy and truly rich at the same time. Yet we still strive to have more money, more things, more prestige, even though none of it gets us anywhere.
Why?
My theory is that the term "everything" is not literally everything you own or have. In the books, the main characters lose everything. Larry Darrell loses mostly intangible things. His parents early on, then his best friend, then his career, then his fiancee, then his second fiancee and lifelong friend, then his life insurance windfall. The narrator in Fight Club loses all of his carefully-selected possessions -- his "whole life" as he tells the arson investigator -- but like most of us, even after every material thing has been stripped away, there is still more for both Larry and the narrator. There is always more. There is prestige, money, status, relationships with people, location in the world, and after all of that is gone, there is your looks, your health, the integrity of your body, and at the very end of it all is the attachment to your life. How do you give that up? There is always more.
Or at least it seems like there is always more until you lose your "everything," whatever it may be. Your "everything" is the one thing that is truly important in your life. Once you've lost it, you realize that all the rest the things you have (your life included) could burn for all you care because your "everything" is gone. For Larry it was Sophie; for the narrator it was Tyler Durden. The Buddha gave up his status, wealth, and family. Hard to say what his "everything" was when he obliterated all that he had. What is it for you? Maybe it's your job, your health, your ability to perform a certain task, your status, your child, your parents, your spouse or companion, your pet, your home, your car. Whatever it is, it's all you truly care about when the cards are on the table. Sadly, I don't think it's possible to know what your "everything" is until it's gone. You might think it's one thing, but it's actually something else -- something unexpected. You may sit there and rationalize away the attachments to various things in your world, but when you lose that one thing -- that "everything" -- it all suddenly gets put into perspective for you. The grim reality of this loss is that, literally or figuratively, you will not survive the experience of losing it.
The good news is, Fight Club is right -- only after you have lost everything are you free to do anything. That doesn't mean there aren't tears and depression between the loss and the acceptance. Once you reach that point, though, you are able to release your attachments to the lesser things; you can let that which truly does not matter, slide. You can see clearly that everything is temporary -- possessions, status, ideas, people. Nothing is perfect, nothing is finished, and nothing lasts forever.
I know exactly what my "everything" was. I know the exact day and time that I lost it, and if I live to be 100 I will never forget that. In some ways, I'm still not over losing it; it's going to take more time. Nobody gets over it instantly. But I know it's never coming back, and I know that nothing will ever replace it. I know what kind of man I am based on how I dealt with it. That's the true test of a person -- losing "everything" changes you in ways that nothing else can.
What's your "everything?" Do you still have it or have you lost it already? What is the one thing that really matters? When you lose your "everything," will you be the person who crumbles and dies without it; the person who withdraws and withers away into an empty shell without it; the person who spends the rest of existence trying futilely to replace it; or the rare person who mourns it, lets it go, and moves on with the relief of knowing that the greatest loss one can feel is already over, understanding that everything else from now until eternity is just a neverending game to play?
