I keep losing stuff as I gain stuff.
I lost the time I used to spend in close-reading and prayer
I gained a degree
I lost the energy to do volunteer somewhere once a week.
I stayed out of debt
I kept loosing community, and I feel like it was because I didn’t give enough.
I learned to be productive alone
I lost the time I used to spend reading for pleasure and extra learning
I do well at my job
I lose friends
I gain colleagues
I gain a relationship
I lose time alone
I lose a relationship
I gain feelings of oblivion
I lose the time to walk for days in the woods
I have a two year plan
Cheap rent, but nowhere to sing.
I walk away to try and gain perspective
When I come back I’ve lost even more
And now, I feel like I’ve lost most elements of what one would call a faith life.
And I’m desperately afraid that I might lose two other things that keep me:
Time to create music
Time to walk and breathe.
And here’s the thing. I’ve gained intelligence, and skills to contribute to society, but it feels like I’ve lost those things that might be just as important: passion, empathy, soul. I pray creativity never joins the list.
And I feel tricked sometimes. Because I keep trying to live well, but feel like I keep getting into more of a quagmire. I know why I couldn’t justify spending all my money on music lessons, or all my time on hiking, or all my academic focus on writing, but I also feel, sometimes, like I missed opportunities to do something fulfilling. Yes, now I feel like a first-class middle class whiner, complaining about how much I can do with my life. And yet, while I tried things that society said were good, I just got further and further from what I’ve always felt like were my essential fulfilments. In my reach for the top of the pyramid, I got lost in the bottom. What is this to say? This pedantic complaining?
I went for a walk recently. Walked from where there was no snow to where there was snow. And then down again. It was beautiful. My hiking friends commented that they enjoyed the visit to the winterland but had no desire to hike for days in it- didn’t understand those that did. I was silent.
You do?
Yes. All the time.
Why don’t you
Takes time to do those kinds of things. Investment of time.
…
You should have small goals, one of them said. Too much of our life is spent peering at a pipe dream which will rob us of the present and fill us with regret and self-loathing if we fail to attain. Fill us with empty fulfillment if we do attain, likely as not.
I agreed, to live our lives in the now, make conscious choices and live with them. To not let regret condemn us or choices paralize us, but to live and do simply the best we can.
And to have those people around you, my other friend said. You don’t need a lot of friends. Just a few to travel life with. That is what is important.
problem being that I never really knew what I wanted, and in attempt to listen to people’s answers to the question of what that might be, I ignored my own instincts, and I still don’t know whose were correct. But I suspect that my hiking friends were, despite being young, were both honest and wise.
I loved the movie “The secret Life of Walter Mitty” it was so full of romance, to the point where I might think that the moral of the story is that I need to go traveling to cold places every time I watch it… a conjecture that may or may not make me any more fulfilled. But I don’t think that’s the takeaway. In the film, the motto of the magazine “Life” was said to be “To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to find each other, and to feel: that is the purpose of life”. Ironically, the protagonist, played by Ben Stiller, has to differentiate between the way he sees his life, and the reality of it (see my next post for the batman analogy).
I suppose we all live our lives by different values, or storylines, and I’ve been writing about the philosophical beauty of a divine storyline, but I also like the Walter Mitty "Life" one, which I don’t think is incompatible. But its worth remembering that the world is often closer than we think. Just beyond a wall, behind a passion, through a pair of eyes.
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