The Ferris-Cameron Continuum
Grasping the reins, and letting them go
You know the scene: a perfect blue-sky day late in the high schoolyear and our culture’s greatest icon of Immediacy fakes a flu to avoid endless hours with Ben Stein monotonously calling his name.
How could I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this?
That’s right, it’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But don’t be mistaken – although I’ve been known for Dr Seuss book reports, this post isn’t a movie review because I’m assuming you’ve seen FB’sDO no fewer than twelve times. No, this post gets to the crux of a yin-yang dynamic we see play out in all areas of our lives, between Ferris and his mostly-unwilling partner in crime (and best friend) Cameron Frye.
While Ferris is devising an elaborate setup to convince his parents he’s sick (clammy palms, gurgling sound effects, a hacked thermometer…), Cameron is actually sick in bed, wanting little to do with life on this glorious Illinois morning. We also may notice that while Ferris’ parents are doting on him (and his older sister cursing him), Cameron seems to be suffering alone in a glass house. Immediately we’re presented with the opposition between the two characters, and catch the first glimpse of the Ferris-Cameron Continuum which we step into every morning we get out of bed, every work meeting we sit down for, every school pickup, every date, every time we’re playing a sport.
Of course, we have habits and tendencies, inclinations and dispositions which are more likely to trap us in a certain range of the continuum. Sometimes the sun is shining and we’re feeling spritely, energetic, and confident, and other times it’s pouring buckets, we’re gloomy, doomy, and afraid of the mean things in the world that seem to mercilessly come bearing down upon us.
It’s the Ferris-Cameron continuum, and we’re always some place on it.
But hang on, let’s take a step back and understand what the poles of this continuum are really all about.
Ferris Bueller, our icon of immediacy, possesses a nearly divine sense of synchronicity, and while having neither rabbit, wand, nor hat, is a magician who can pull a rabbit he doesn’t have out of a hat he’s not wearing. He wakes up on the morning the movie begins, and is driven by the impulse to get outside, find adventure, and at all costs avoid the drudgery of school. He’s literally being hunted down by his principal for half the movie, and he just dances on. There’s a mischievous twelve-year-old at the controls, tempered by the social tact of a charming teenager.
In a nutshell, Ferris seems to trust. Trust in what? I don’t know, the Great Magnet or something. He trusts his own instincts, to get him out of trouble when he comes close. He trusts there’s an adventure worth having, lying around the next corner. I don’t think Ferris is chasing it, but he tosses himself into the action and trusts he can make something great of what comes next.
Maybe he’s a megalomaniac. Maybe purely hedonistic, maybe impulsive and unrestrained, but we can be sure of one thing: he’s a hell of a lot different than Cameron.
Cameron is oppressed by invisible forces. When we meet him he doesn’t want to get out of bed. He’s coerced into leaving his house for his best friend, ambivalent about whether to leave his comfortable bubble or not. He sees no point. Life is filled with misery, drudgery, and annoyance, and Cameron has a pretty good idea of what lies around the corner. He has no interest in seeking it out because he’s seen it many times before and it sucks. Interestingly, what he typically finds does indeed suck.
Ferris has little (if any) regard for rules. He sees them as guidelines that help the world function in a mostly-orderly fashion, much like lines painted on a road. They’re visible if you look for them, but there’s no issue stepping on or over them when you have something more compelling on the other side. Whether that’s tricking Mr Rooney (the school principal) into signing his girlfriend out for the day, “borrowing” Cameron’s dad’s vintage Ferrari 250 GT, jumping on a float in a downtown Chicago midday parade, or convincing the maître d' at an upscale restaurant that he belongs there. Whatever the case may be, Ferris Bueller has a magical power to bend the universe to his desire.
Is it magic? Or is it confident curiosity? Playful mischief? A trust and a lust for life?
Ferris has no plan for the day that becomes his Day Off, and to be fair, neither does Cameron. The vast, galaxy-sized chasm between the two of them is Ferris sees nearly ∞ possibilities, and Cameron sees nearly 0 possibilities. Cameron aims to lie in bed all day, feel physically & spiritually unwell, and check another day off the calendar of his life.
Ferris begins his day like he’s standing at the top of a mountain, and just starts tumbling down it. When he sees interesting things he veers toward them. He’s falling in full fashion, and the lesson we learn from him is that we’re all falling, and some of us are doing it more willingly/gracefully/wonderfully than others.
Up to this point, I’m making it sound like the only point to the Ferris-Cameron Continuum is to lean as hard toward Ferris as possible. Although there are moments when that’s a great idea, if you take that as the lesson you’re missing a massive piece of the puzzle. Ferris and Cameron are yang and yin, and if you look closely you’ll discover Cameron’s depth, and sometimes Ferris’ shallowness. By the end of the Day Off, it’s actually Cameron who’s gone through a transformation. Ferris is pretty much the same person he woke up as, he’s just done some really cool shit.
Cameron provides order, structure, and slightly reins in Ferris’ wild energy. However misguided and distorted, he does have a picture of the future in a way that Ferris doesn’t seem to. Ferris can find and formulate fun, but is moving so fast down the mountain it’s hard to anticipate his next moves.
If there’s one factor to boil down the entire Ferris-Cameron Continuum, it’s this: Cameron struggles with the world happening to him. His order and emotional depth come at the cost of constraint and feeling those constraints as limits on himself. Ferris makes magic happen in the world around him, a wizard at making lemonade from the lemons that he finds.
Every day, every interaction, every hand that’s dealt, we have options of how to respond, and those options usually reach wider than our habits will suggest. It’s not that we are more Ferris or more Cameron; we’re always somewhere on the Ferris-Cameron Continuum, and we can aim for a place that’ll keep Ferris’ most famous line at the front of mind, whether we’re freewheeling or planning, whether adventuring or lamenting:
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
🎙️ Listen to the podcast extension of this post on Follow the What’s That 🎙️