These days, I find it hard to feel alive. Iāve found myself turning to sound baths and reiki, meditation and manifesting, vision boards and listening earnestly to conversations about astrological signsāeager to find a constellation, for any hope that some unexplained magic might exist, for āsome other sign that people do not totally regret life.ā
Iām sure some part of it is because of this involuntary holding pattern necessitated by the pandemic. Weāve put our lives on holdāas we sheltered-in-place, as international borders closed, then opened, then closed again. But even while our lives have fallen startlingly stillāor at least, have become a procession of one-note daysāLife 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 founderāan adultāare too overpowering. To survive, weāve learned to extinguish our curiosities before they grow to devour us, before they can make us restless and unhappy. Weāve learned not to look around too much, not to ask too many questions.
Instead, like racehorses with blinders on, we push forwardāand we conflate āforwardā with āprogress,ā equate āprogressā with āgood.ā We conveniently forget that āforwardā is in the direction of a certain darkness, and we intentionally distract ourselves with shiny objects and small battlesāhome ownership and promotionsāalong the way.
the life i donāt want
Iāve 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 othersā 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 itās not all bad. I know that theyāre probably happy, most of the time. I know that itās entirely possible that in between bickering about types of milk, and at the edges of anxieties around childcare, thereās some semblance of magic, maybe. But still, I suspect that what Iām looking for in this life isnāt found in theirs.
I feel like Iām one of a handful still waiting at the starting line, resistant to plodding along the racetrack after everyone elseāeven 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 empireāthe 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 capitalismāwhich is why, I think, Iāve been struggling with the existentialism that Iāve 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
āat least i can feel itā
Being happy in, and with, the present, is so rare that there is a phenomenon called anhedonia, āa 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 happinessā¦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.ā
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.
ā Alain de Botton, on love
He makes a good pointāwhat is there to live for if youāre 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 lifeāof loveādepends upon balancing on a razorās edgeāexisting at this edge of knowability, of attainability, and finding, with a faint sense of relief, that itās 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. Iāve always known that there was something of a masochist inside me (related, Iām sure, to my immigrant upbringing)āthe other night, I explained to my friend, Ian, that itās the pure sufferingāand overcoming that sufferingāthat 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 companyāall good and beautiful thingsābut for me, itās the suffering.
After all, suffering is one of the surest way to feel aliveāto 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? āLike the Little Mermaid in the fairy tale, sometimes being alive feels like walking over glass. But at least Iām walking. And at least I can feel it.ā
I mentioned to Ian that every time Iām on a backpacking trip, carrying a pack thatās 60% of my body weight, I have a moment or two where I think to myself, āwhy am I doing this to myself? My ancestors worked so hard to escape this shit, so I wouldnāt have to.ā But I think thatās exactly why I do it. Itās privileged, and perhaps foolish, but what does it matter? Thereās 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 lifeāfirst 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 adulthoodāuntil thereās all there is, really. Part of it is a choice. Most of it is inevitableātime moves forward, even if you donāt; nothing stays green or golden; after youāve survived enough heartbreaks or celebrated enough triumphs, it all begins to blurādoesnāt 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 havenāt 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 ofĀ time.
ā Phil Christman, Some Deaths Before Dying
Very well written, and love the Alain de Botton quote. The Course of Love, Status Anxiety, and The Art of Travel are some of my favorite books. He has an enviable way with words.
A thought that came up while reading this one: polarities create existence. Adulthood is the polarity of childhood. No magic the polarity of magic. Suffering the polarity of joy. Or something like that. Without suffering, joy is like a fish in water that doesnāt know about water. Only with the existence of suffering do we appreciate and āexperienceā joy. Experiencing the existentialism of life is a polarity of great aliveness, so maybe thereās just some balancing that is happening to make ārealā some aliveness (or vice versa)