Another Gray Day
I'm having another mini life crisis. This is an all-too-familiar feeling for me. I experience this a few times per year.
I question my present life and the path I'm headed down. I feel like a failure, like a fool. I quit just about everything I do, and it feels like everyone's looking at me laughing, pointing their condescending finger. I feel like everyone else has life together-- a neat and tidy life. I don't. I never have, and am fearful that I never will. And just when I think I'm beginning to gain some clarity into making some sense out of my inner-self and my purpose for being here, I have one of these crisis moments.
I know it'll subside. I have people to help me through it. But I feel alone. I feel like an alien from a planet that has yet to be discovered. I feel like I'm the only one who has ever felt this way. I feel the weight. I feel the despair. It will lift because it always does. But for now, it's shit.
I hate that I attach fulfillment to things that can be taken away. Jobs, people, travel. I'm always searching for meaning and purpose, and when I feel like I have it in the palm of my hand, it suddenly slips my grip. I hate this inner turmoil that I constantly wrestle with. I wish I could be content gliding through life like so many others appear to be doing so well. Maybe everyone else feels the same way I do? I don't know.
These are the times God seems distant. These are the times I don't want to "choose joy." I want to bathe in my misery and feel every square inch of my pain.
Richard Rohr often says that suffering is one of life's greatest teachers. I suppose this is true, but in moments like this I don't know what I'm learning. How do you learn when your brain is filled with clouds of confusion? Thoughts feel foggy and disorienting.
So, I'll "waste" this day. I won't do much of anything that's productive except try to climb out of the pit I feel like I'm in. I might try to read, I'll assuredly eat, and I'll probably spend time with people I love.
I'm not trying to be a trendy blogger who's constantly bragging about his suffering and pain. Thus, I won't end these thoughts with an encouraging word to myself, or to anyone else for that matter. There's no pivot in this post. I'll just simply end because sometimes hope feels too far away. I can't see light at the end of the tunnel and even if I could, it would probably be a mirage and eventually let me down. That's been my relationship with ideas of meaning and fulfillment. It always ends up letting me down in the end. Oh well.
Cheers to a gray day.
A self-response EXACTLY 1 year later...
I recall how this "gray day" came about last year.
I had been enrolled in a graduate program studying theology with the hopes that I would eventually move on to a doctorate and then land a sweet job teaching college kids about religion and spirituality. Well, after about two semesters in my graduate program, reality set in. I began seeing the resources necessary to make this all happen. Lots of time, lots of energy, and LOTS of cash! And then there was the doubts of ever being able to land a job as a professor. Other professors started telling me how dim the future of the humanities looked. Thus, I awoke from my dream of sailing smoothly through this journey. The cold hard reality sucked.
Now, I can clearly see what the problem was: I attached my happiness to being a college prof. Once I saw that this wasn't going to happen, my fulfillment was gone. I felt utter despair. What a wretched feeling that is. "Despair makes the heart sick," the Psalmist says. Oh, how true!
And now one year later I find myself in a better place. I quit my graduate program, and I really have no idea what career path I want to head down. But, I am mostly okay with this. It's something that still crosses my mind, but the confusion doesn't weigh on me like it once did, especially the way it did last year on this day.
Lessons I now remind myself or to which I would tell anyone else going through similar struggles.
1. Don't let a career define you or your "success" in life.
2. Be present. Live in the moment. Being rigidly married to future plans will drive you nuts! Be flexible with where life is taking you, and enjoy the journey.
Well, that's all I have for now. Cheers to making this a sunny day! :)
I question my present life and the path I'm headed down. I feel like a failure, like a fool. I quit just about everything I do, and it feels like everyone's looking at me laughing, pointing their condescending finger. I feel like everyone else has life together-- a neat and tidy life. I don't. I never have, and am fearful that I never will. And just when I think I'm beginning to gain some clarity into making some sense out of my inner-self and my purpose for being here, I have one of these crisis moments.
I know it'll subside. I have people to help me through it. But I feel alone. I feel like an alien from a planet that has yet to be discovered. I feel like I'm the only one who has ever felt this way. I feel the weight. I feel the despair. It will lift because it always does. But for now, it's shit.
I hate that I attach fulfillment to things that can be taken away. Jobs, people, travel. I'm always searching for meaning and purpose, and when I feel like I have it in the palm of my hand, it suddenly slips my grip. I hate this inner turmoil that I constantly wrestle with. I wish I could be content gliding through life like so many others appear to be doing so well. Maybe everyone else feels the same way I do? I don't know.
These are the times God seems distant. These are the times I don't want to "choose joy." I want to bathe in my misery and feel every square inch of my pain.
Richard Rohr often says that suffering is one of life's greatest teachers. I suppose this is true, but in moments like this I don't know what I'm learning. How do you learn when your brain is filled with clouds of confusion? Thoughts feel foggy and disorienting.
So, I'll "waste" this day. I won't do much of anything that's productive except try to climb out of the pit I feel like I'm in. I might try to read, I'll assuredly eat, and I'll probably spend time with people I love.
I'm not trying to be a trendy blogger who's constantly bragging about his suffering and pain. Thus, I won't end these thoughts with an encouraging word to myself, or to anyone else for that matter. There's no pivot in this post. I'll just simply end because sometimes hope feels too far away. I can't see light at the end of the tunnel and even if I could, it would probably be a mirage and eventually let me down. That's been my relationship with ideas of meaning and fulfillment. It always ends up letting me down in the end. Oh well.
Cheers to a gray day.
A self-response EXACTLY 1 year later...
I recall how this "gray day" came about last year.
I had been enrolled in a graduate program studying theology with the hopes that I would eventually move on to a doctorate and then land a sweet job teaching college kids about religion and spirituality. Well, after about two semesters in my graduate program, reality set in. I began seeing the resources necessary to make this all happen. Lots of time, lots of energy, and LOTS of cash! And then there was the doubts of ever being able to land a job as a professor. Other professors started telling me how dim the future of the humanities looked. Thus, I awoke from my dream of sailing smoothly through this journey. The cold hard reality sucked.
Now, I can clearly see what the problem was: I attached my happiness to being a college prof. Once I saw that this wasn't going to happen, my fulfillment was gone. I felt utter despair. What a wretched feeling that is. "Despair makes the heart sick," the Psalmist says. Oh, how true!
And now one year later I find myself in a better place. I quit my graduate program, and I really have no idea what career path I want to head down. But, I am mostly okay with this. It's something that still crosses my mind, but the confusion doesn't weigh on me like it once did, especially the way it did last year on this day.
Lessons I now remind myself or to which I would tell anyone else going through similar struggles.
1. Don't let a career define you or your "success" in life.
2. Be present. Live in the moment. Being rigidly married to future plans will drive you nuts! Be flexible with where life is taking you, and enjoy the journey.
Well, that's all I have for now. Cheers to making this a sunny day! :)
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