The Seven Deadly Needs

Excerpted from
The Seven Deadly Needs
By Edward Bear

You teach best what you most need to learn. - Richard Bach, Illusions

Nobody knows how long he's lived here, maybe not even Tyler himself. But most everybody knows him. At least knows who he is. Claims he's been here sixty-some years, but you can't get anybody to swear to it. I mean besides him. Never met anyone who actually remembers him from when they were young. Going to school with him. Anything like that. It's possible that Tyler never was young. I think about that sometimes. Just seems like he's always been here, like the town itself.

Despite the fact that he can be difficult at times, he is generally held in high regard by most people. There are those who say (though certainly not a majority) that he has about him a certain aura of wisdom, an assessment he would most assuredly reject. But he looks the part-tall, gray, a little bent with age, his face a leathery map of what could pass for wisdom. Trouble is, he is more likely to act like a juvenile delinquent than someone with a little wisdom-getting into snowball fights with the neighborhood kids, going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight at least once a month. (It's been rumored that some parents don't want their kids hanging around him, but I never heard any of the kids complain. They all seem to love him.)

A few of the townspeople are convinced that he's a little shaky in the mental department, a few bricks short of a full load so to speak, or at best an old man who gives new meaning to the word eccentric. (They would be even more appalled if they knew the Real Story.) The town's very old-fashioned about things like that. Very conservative. They feel that a person well past the half-century mark should conduct himself with a certain amount of dignity. And dignified, he is not. What Tyler always says is, Nobody I know of is getting out of this thing alive, so why not enjoy it? Besides, you'd be surprised at what's waiting on the other side. . . . Whatever that last part means.

I know him from the meetings we go to. I'm not allowed to say which ones, but they are Twelve-Step type meetings that are supposed to be anonymous. You know-recovery stuff. Hence the fact that I refer to him as Tyler (not his real name) and myself as Edward Bear (not my real name, either). It says in one of those books we read that, Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions. . . . Has a real nice ring to it, though the meaning is a little hazy. Tyler says it means you're just supposed to suit up and show up and not make a big deal about it. The names and identities of the guilty or innocent are unimportant. The fact that you're clean and sober, not eating a whole chocolate cake for breakfast, not gambling away the rent money, or having a dozen orgasms a day to relieve the tension ought to be reward enough. Means you're doing a few things right. Enough things.

Progress, not perfection, is what he says, grinning like everybody should know what that means. It's hard by the yard, but a cinch by the inch. Another one of his corny favorites.

But he's a guy who just seems to be there when you need him. I remember during my divorce when I didn't think I was going to make it, Tyler would just show up someplace where I was. Out of the blue, there he was. Or he'd call. How are you and that divorce lawyer doing?

You know during that time I even thought about killing myself. Got to be way too much for me. That's right, old Mr. Stability himself, Steady Eddy Bear, thought about ending it all. Here I was, college educated (so what if I didn't get through all four years?), with a regular job as checker at the local Safeway (where I got my real education), unpublished writer-in-residence, actually a pretty stable guy, and I was thinking about pulling down the final curtain a little early. Tyler said I'd probably end up killing the wrong guy. I didn't get what he meant until a year later.

Tyler was in the habit of chuckling about it. There is no misfortune so tragic that Tyler can't find some humor in it. So he suggested (we don't tell one another to do things in recovery, we suggest-works better that way) that I might want to get back to basics and do some of those Twelve Steps again. I hated it. Every week another step, and old Tyler just chuckling away like it's the funniest thing that ever happened. Here I am dying, my wife's throwing me out of the house and Tyler's going ha ha ha. . . .

But before we were through I began to feel better. Almost in spite of myself. Tyler always talks about life being a series of surrenders. It's simple, he says. You get beat up enough, you surrender or you die. When I ask what I need to surrender, or who I need to surrender to, he just shrugs and says he doesn't have a clue. But you know, he says, that long, crooked finger pointed at my chest. Personally, I think he knows and just won't tell me.

So the latest thing is I get a letter in the mail. I mean I see him at least twice a week, and he finds it necessary to send me a letter. Can't just talk to me. Tyler has to send a letter. This is what it says:

Dear Anonymous:

I'll be at your house this Thursday at seven. And for the next seven Thursdays. Get some tapes for your portable recorder. We will be discussing one of the Seven Deadly Needs on each of those Thursdays. You will have questions about them. I know you will. Because you're smart. The Seven Deadly Needs are as follows:

The need to KNOW

The need to BE RIGHT

The need to GET EVEN

The need to LOOK GOOD

The need to JUDGE

The need to KEEP SCORE

The need to CONTROL

. . . not necessarily in the order of importance.

(Later he tells me a long, involved story about how the Seven Deadly Needs came to him in a dream. Like a vision. At best I am suspicious; at worst I think it is an outright fabrication.)

He doesn't even sign it, but I know it's from him. Who else could it be? Nobody is who else. Only Tyler would send a letter like that, assuming that I would rearrange my life in whatever way was necessary to set aside the next seven Thursdays. Just for him. So he could come and talk about the Seven Deadly Needs or whatever. But of course I do. I know it's important. He talks a lot now about the fact that his time here is short (he tells me I'm his replacement, so he may have to accelerate my training). He says he's preparing to return to the Source, to go home to the Big Pumpkin Patch in the Sky and be reunited with what he refers to as the Great Pumpkin. Talk about crazy ideas. Where it's Halloween all the time and everyone dresses up to play "Treat or Treat." Drives the religious people crazy. He is irreverent at best, sacrilegious at worst. He has been known to use the F-word in close conjunction with the G-word. Like right next to it in a sentence. Out loud. Now that seriously drives some people crazy. But I know him well enough to know that he does it to make people think about what they actually believe. At least I think that's why he does it. Maybe he just likes to shock people. Hard to tell with Tyler.

But make no mistake, I love the guy, though I continue to give him a hard time about almost everything. I even question the things he says that I know are true. I recognize it as Truth Itself, but I still have a question or two. Just to keep him on his toes. Guy like him could get complacent.

So what follows are the recorded sessions of the Seven Deadly Needs, taped during the Thursday Evening Coffee Hour, with occasional editorial comments by your friendly reporter. Uncut and uncensored, if not unplugged. And Tyler's still here, but I don't think for long.