"Nonsense!" replied Leonard. "We'll just get a better man to play you!"
Once that better man – Dick Van Dyke – was secured, the show went on to become one of the foundational classics of American television.
This anecdote has so many Zen ramifications it counts as a contemporary koan. How many times have I felt that my life would have played out better if somebody else had lived it – if karma had simply recast the role of me.
Such speculation isn't solely the product of our own delusional minds. We also get told this by those around us – that the problem is we're us, and that's what needs to change. Generally by people looking to profit in some way. It's rather a perfect storm of co-arising – our delusion playing off their delusion playing off ours.
The essential fallacy of this proposition is that if someone else had starred in my life, it wouldn't have happened. Nor would I. Nor in fact would they; a person living another person's life is… that other person. (And now we're back to Jason Pargin.)
Anyway, this notion that the only thing wrong with my life is that I'm in it, is the sort of image the Ancestors used to pitch to smash our brains out of their worn grooves. Is the suggestion a paradox, or is it me? Is there some deeper intent, or am I supposed to use a different part of my mind to understand?
Is it so obvious I can't see it? Or is it such nonsense that it appears plausible?
Or is this where I kick over the bucket? Because that part's fun.
By the way, Reiner had no hard feelings about the recasting. He completely agreed with Leonard's analysis, and was happily demoted from leading man in his own life to the role of Dick's boss.
In which character, being entirely unlike him, he excelled.
(Photo of the better Carl Reiner courtesy of CBS Television and Wikimedia Commons.)
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