While paddleboarding in the ocean today, a metaphor came to mind. Authentic living = knowing yourself and being in the world in a way that fits your soul.
For example, a canoe belongs in the water. A snowmobile belongs on the snow. A bike belongs on land.
Yet, some of us are born as canoes on land. It might take us a lot of time — decades, even — to find our way to the water. The people around us might say: there’s something wrong with you. You need to change.
But really, what needs to happen is self-acceptance and taking action. If a canoe is born into a family of bikes in a place far from water, it needs to go on a journey. It needs to try a lot of different things. Meet a lot of different folks. And eventually, dip into the water and exclaim: “This is for me!”
Growing up, I felt like that landlocked canoe. I grew up in Buffalo, NY. People around me loved watching sports, specifically the Buffalo Bills and Sabres. I didn’t seem to be able to get myself to care about watching sports.
I recently talked to some friends and asked them: do you like watching sports? They didn’t.
This was healing for me. I realized: I don’t have to force myself to like watching sports. There’s so many other ways I can be in the world. There are people with interests outside of sports I can befriend.
I don’t have to be the canoe who keeps trying to make life work on the land. I can go on a journey and get myself to the water.
Tonight I’m scheduled to have a meeting with someone whose website I found by googling the term “existential depression.” This website defines existential depression as depression arising out of confronting issues like: meaning of life, isolation, death, and one’s place in the world.
I’d never heard the words “existential” and “depression” linked together until I came upon the term in a book about physician suicide. Though I’m definitely a newbie when it comes to learning about existential depression, I resonate with the term.
I think I’ve experienced it in the past several times:
- I’ve felt deeply sad that the people who I loved and loved me would die. I began writing a novel to get humanity to “wake up” the the horror of aging and death and work to solve this problem. Why were we wasting our lives on hedonism when we could work to end aging? After reading my book, I wanted people to get off their butts and get into a biology lab!
- I felt deeply sad that nature was being destroyed by humans, and that, as a human in “the grid” of extractive capitalism, I was part of the problem.
- I’ve felt deeply sad when I was about to turn 20. While studying abroad in Australia, I saw the wrinkles forming on my face as evidence that I was aging and that, if I didn’t do something, I would die and my consciousness would end. I didn’t see the point of having fun times and dancing with my new friends when we’d all be skeletons in the future anyways.
- I’ve felt lonely because I couldn’t seem to fit in throughout most of my upbringing. Growing up, I frequently felt like a weirdo, a misfit. I felt a profound sense of isolation. At one point in childhood, I remember talking to my fish, a beautiful rainbow shark, and telling him: “You are the only one who understands me.”
- I learned how to socially blend in. In prioritizing fitting in, I lost the thread of my true interests. Taking a sabbatical to do clowning and go to an ecovillage, doing the Artist’s Way, going to Wonder Wander, starting reading again, and building local community with people who I resonate with and accept me have been ways I’ve rediscovered authentic connection with myself and others.
- I yearned for a grand meaning that would organize my life, like Orthodox Jews seemed to have (e.g. “Life is about having a family and following the 613 mitzvot”). I yearned for a template that would tell me how to live. Without such a template, I felt massive confusion about all the different possible future paths.
- I’ve experienced tremendous decision paralysis and anxiety at major life crossroads. The core fear I think was an unwillingness to accept that my possibilities will shrink, as the white pages of my future become filled with the text of my life story. Senior year of high school, before going to college, I spent my time going to grad parties and socializing. I basked in the beautiful energy of possibility mixed with belonging. I wrote this poem which describes that feeling. I wanted to stay in that feeling, and yet, my soul knew that I couldn’t. As Neil Young sings: “You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain.” These big life decisions were life’s way of kicking me out of Sugar Mountain. On one level, I was paralyzed at crossroads because of perfectionism: I wanted to get the decision “right.” But subconsciously maybe I was stalling because I would prefer to not write the next chapter of my story. I’d prefer to stay undifferentiated…
I don’t have much of an agenda about tonight’s meeting. I’m showing up from a place of curiosity. Writing this has already been healing, and I’m excited about following the breadcrumbs and seeing where they lead!
danscreativeoulet 