adulthood is a sedative 😇

let's go backpacking

These days, I find it hard to feel alive. I’ve found myself turning to sound baths and reiki, meditation and manifesting, vision boards and listening earnestly to conversations about astrological signs—eager to find a constellation, for any hope that some unexplained magic might exist, for “some other sign that people do not totally regret life.”

I’m sure some part of it is because of this involuntary holding pattern necessitated by the pandemic. We’ve put our lives on hold—as we sheltered-in-place, as international borders closed, then opened, then closed again. But even while our lives have fallen startlingly still—or at least, have become a procession of one-note days—Life has continued to go on.

I took a two-year nap and now everyone I know seems to be embroiled in adulthood. No one seems to dream anymore. The realities and responsibilities of being a partner, a mother, a founder—an adult—are too overpowering. To survive, we’ve learned to extinguish our curiosities before they grow to devour us, before they can make us restless and unhappy. We’ve learned not to look around too much, not to ask too many questions.

Instead, like racehorses with blinders on, we push forward—and we conflate “forward” with “progress,” equate “progress” with “good.” We conveniently forget that “forward” is in the direction of a certain darkness, and we intentionally distract ourselves with shiny objects and small battles—home ownership and promotions—along the way.

the life i don’t want

I’ve always been voyeuristic. Growing up, my parents insisted on going for a walk after every meal (this, as it turns out, is an effective approach for moderating blood glucose levels and supporting digestion). On these walks, I would peer into the windows of houses along our street, at domestic lives lit in amber light. I saw muted conversations and uninspired dinners, people hardly looking into each others’ eyes.

Now, when I look at friends who are further along the path most-traveled, further along in collecting milestones, in their Becoming, actualizing into fully-realized adults with adult concerns and adult possessions; when I think about myself walking along the same path, all I feel is a growing panic.

I know it’s not all bad. I know that they’re probably happy, most of the time. I know that it’s entirely possible that in between bickering about types of milk, and at the edges of anxieties around childcare, there’s some semblance of magic, maybe. But still, I suspect that what I’m looking for in this life isn’t found in theirs.

I feel like I’m one of a handful still waiting at the starting line, resistant to plodding along the racetrack after everyone else—even though I know that the only direction I can go is forward. It seems to me that the only constant in life is clockwork and panic.

I tell myself that most lives these days play their part in upholding the empire—the institutions and structures and systems that keep each of us in our place. I have enough self-awareness to know that my life is doing its part as well, that my life is a life scaffolded on capitalism—which is why, I think, I’ve been struggling with the existentialism that I’ve been writing about, ad nauseam, lately.

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

-- Mary Oliver, Of The Empire

“at least i can feel it”

Being happy in, and with, the present, is so rare that there is a phenomenon called anhedonia, “a disease defined by the British Medical Association as a reaction remarkably close to mountain sickness resulting from the sudden terror brought on by the threat of happiness…the sudden realization that earthly happiness might be within their grasp, and prey therefore to a violent physiological reaction designed to counteract such a daunting possibility.”

Because happiness is so terrifying and anxiety-inducing to accept, somewhat unconsciously [we] had always tended to locate hedonia either in memory or in anticipation. Though the pursuit of happiness was our avowed goal, it was accompanied by an implicit belief that it would be realized somewhere in the very distant future.

Why did we live this way? Perhaps because to enjoy ourselves in the present would have meant engaging ourselves in an imperfect or dangerously ephemeral reality, rather than hiding behind a comfortable belief in an afterlife. Living in the future perfect tense involved holding up an ideal life to contrast with the present, one that would save us from the need to commit ourselves to our situation. It was a pattern akin to that found in certain religions, in which life on earth is only a prelude to an everlasting and far more pleasant heavenly existence.

— Alain de Botton, on love

He makes a good point—what is there to live for if you’re already happy? What is life without anticipation of a better future? What would there be to look forward to? Hope for? Dream of? So much of life—of love—depends upon balancing on a razor’s edge—existing at this edge of knowability, of attainability, and finding, with a faint sense of relief, that it’s always just out of reach.

He goes on to posit:

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

We refuse happiness-in-the-present tense because it would remind us, like so many things do, of our mortality. And so we put the blinders on and look ahead.

What a familiar thought. I’ve always known that there was something of a masochist inside me (related, I’m sure, to my immigrant upbringing)—the other night, I explained to my friend, Ian, that it’s the pure suffering—and overcoming that suffering—that motivates me to go on 14-mile backpacking trips. For the well-adjusted, it might be immersing in nature or the alpine views or the campfire company—all good and beautiful things—but for me, it’s the suffering.

After all, suffering is one of the surest way to feel alive—to feel real. Is there anything more real than putting one blistered foot in front of the other, lighting your own fire, sleeping under the cold stars? Or scrambling to find shelter from sudden thunderstorms, or 40mph winds that snap your tent pole at midnight? “Like the Little Mermaid in the fairy tale, sometimes being alive feels like walking over glass. But at least I’m walking. And at least I can feel it.”

My dear friend, Erin, looking over our kingdom.

I mentioned to Ian that every time I’m on a backpacking trip, carrying a pack that’s 60% of my body weight, I have a moment or two where I think to myself, “why am I doing this to myself? My ancestors worked so hard to escape this shit, so I wouldn’t have to.” But I think that’s exactly why I do it. It’s privileged, and perhaps foolish, but what does it matter? There’s something both primitive and pristine in these moments that makes me feel alive, that reminds me that life is worthwhile.

As the days go by, adulthood becomes more and more prescribed. I can feel it beginning to envelope my life—first through my friends, then in the form of souvenirs like grocery lists and water bills and other momentary mundanities, and finally, bursting through, until my life is strewn with artifacts of adulthood—until there’s all there is, really. Part of it is a choice. Most of it is inevitable—time moves forward, even if you don’t; nothing stays green or golden; after you’ve survived enough heartbreaks or celebrated enough triumphs, it all begins to blur—doesn’t it?

We adults view the struggles of teenagers with pity, amusement, and contempt, reactions that preserve our distance from our own memories of being so young, so susceptible to the characteristic pain of this period: pain constituted, in large part, by the absence of perspective. Every breakup, every fight, every death, every friendship lost to gossip or to moving trucks seems unsurvivable precisely because you haven’t survived many such losses yet. You wonder, rightly, how it can possibly be done. And yet there is something admirable, even beautiful, about these storms of rage and sadness and fear, which recall the goddesses and gods of classical mythology, who also live outside the dulling and comforting repetitions of time.

— Phil Christman, Some Deaths Before Dying