Does life come with a set of instructions on how to live it? And if so, who wrote them? By whose authority are the instructions to be followed? Options are fairly limited here, reducing either to God, who inscribed them into the very constitution of our being, or ourselves, who more or less make things up as we go along. We write the constitution, adding numberless amendments along the way. Are we aiming to hit the bullseye of beatitude, or do we fall headlong into hell? It hardly matters so long as we get to call the shots. 

It has not always been like that. Not until the 1960s, when the world seriously lost its mind, had people quite given up on God. Before that, almost everyone would have agreed with C.S. Lewis, who, taking note of the fact that we live in a world none of us created, drew the obvious conclusion: “Your preferences have not been consulted.” That had been the perspective in place pretty much forever — yes, even when the observance remained largely in the breach. How else can there be hypocrites, who, by the very exercise of their vice, to quote Oscar Wilde, “pay homage to virtue?”

But with the triumph of the self-centered self, which became the great rallying cry of the ’60s disaffection and revolt, everything got turned upside down. Standards began to collapse, the center ceased to hold, and more and more the cry became: No outside interference!

I mean, it is no cultural accident that a signature song like “My Way” became a smash hit the instant Frank Sinatra recorded it back in 1969. Lyrics like these would never have been written, or possibly even thought of, in the decade before the deluge:

I’ve lived a life that’s full.
I’ve traveled each and every highway.
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, I’ve had a few;
But then again, too few to mention. …

I faced it all, and I stood tall;
And did it my way. …

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels,
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows —
And did it my way.

So, what exactly does it mean to do it my way? In a word, it means solipsism, which is the complete enshrinement of the self over everything and everyone else. A self so stuffed with itself that there’s no room for others to breathe. Not even for God. Reality becomes nothing more than an extension of one’s ego, the demands of which trump the entire universe.

In a brave and prophetic little book written many years ago by Robert Elliot Fitch called The Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self, a series of descending phases are identified in the devolution of faith, beginning with the love of Nature, then Humanity, followed by Society, which is another name for Nationalism. Until, finally, we arrive at the Self, the worship of which brings us to our present moment. 

And if anyone were interested in taking a snapshot of this, our latest god of corruption, one could do a lot worse than to have watched a two-minute commercial on Super Bowl Sunday, where the cleverest ads are shown. Indeed, they are sometimes more entertaining to watch than the game itself.

“The longest thing we ever do,” began Harrison Ford, addressing millions of football fans, “is live our lives. But life doesn’t come with an owner’s manual.” Which means, of course, that “we get to write our own stories.”

Freedom is Yes, or No, or Maybe. Freedom is for everybody. Freedom is the ability to inspire. The most sacred thing in life isn’t the path. It’s the freedom to choose it.

Say what? Ah, but he isn’t done. He’s just warming to his subject, which turns out is all about getting people to buy a Jeep, the vehicle he happens to be driving while delivering his little pep talk on freedom. “You don’t have to be friends with someone to wave at ‘em,” he assures us, closing in for the kill. “We won’t always agree on which way to go. But our differences can be our strength. 

So choose, but choose wisely. Choose what makes you happy. My friends, my family, my work make me happy.  This Jeep makes me happy. Even though my name is Ford (his voice falling to a whisper while he says it). That’s my owner’s manual. Get out there, write your own. 

The ad ends with a huge Jeep logo filling the screen, with the words “There’s only one” underneath. It is very, very slick. And will doubtless sell a great many Jeeps. 

So, besides the birth certificate signed by the doctor who delivered you, what else were you expecting from being born? A set of instructions on how to live? Don’t be ridiculous. It may be true that the two most important days of your life are the day you’re born, followed by the day you find out why, but it’s going to be up to you to figure all of that out. Not God, but you. Only remember: it’s not the choices you make that matter, but the freedom to make them. That’s the sacred part. That’s the Ford philosophy. Unless, of course, you were planning to buy something other than a Jeep. 

Just ask Harrison Ford, who was paid close to 5 million bucks to tell us all this. And why should we listen to him? Because he's an Icon of the silver screen, that’s why. Whose films have grossed close to 15 billion bucks worldwide and whose own personal worth is 300 million, which works out to exactly 100 million for each of his three wives.

Does he ever regret, I wonder, the life he’s lived? The choices he’s made? Sinatra certainly did, if we are to believe his daughter — following her father’s death, she told reporters that he had come to hate the song.

Despite all the attention, the awards, the money, “He just didn’t like it,” she said. “That song stuck and he couldn’t get it off his shoe. He always thought that song was self-serving and self-indulgent.” 

Getting it off our shoe is something we all have to do.