WTWN #63 - Existential Drift
When lost, keep going.
For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his "ideas" are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality. —JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET!
This week, I explore those times when things seem not just a bit off, and everything seems lacking, but you can’t quite put your finger on what.
(It’s the inevitability of death, of course. But that’s a whole other essay.)
My life is rich, yes?
But sadness creeps in.
My solution? Keep going.
I was tempted to write another piece about lack of inspiration. But the more committed I am to writing, the less inspiration or motivation is necessary. It’s the habit that counts. So, let me tackle this feeling of drift directly as something I woke up with this morning despite sixty years on earth and a relatively firm grasp on my goals.
The sense of being adrift is often accompanied by a sense of soul weariness. It’s best described by a cliché. It’s like being aboard a ship without a rudder on an ocean with no shore in sight, feeling lost and alone.
On such mornings (usually mornings before I’ve had a chance to busy myself), I see that I am on track with my tasks and routines, exercise and meditation, reading and journaling. It’s during journaling that I often realize that I am drifting.
Despite my life’s self-imposed structure, I ask: Isn't there more?
Why does this question still arise? Don't I know the answer? I keep asking. The answer is a big yes and no at the same time.
Looking at the near and distant, I see more of the same indefinitely, which is fine if my daily habits align. (I.e., incremental daily efforts will produce the intended fruit of my life’s work.)
This morning, I realized again how much reading enriches my life. I just finished Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch (part of my goal to read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels from 1918 to the present), which means I spent the past couple of weeks with the trauma patients and orderlies of a mental hospital in 1874 Virginia. I feel I have traveled in both time and space.
My life is rich, yes?
But sadness creeps in.
My solution? Keep going.
I looked at my watch and the bus schedule, calculated, and realized I needed to leave for work to make it in time for my first meeting.
This is how routines save us; we should keep them even when we feel like we can't, especially when we feel like we can't.
I suspect clinical depression causes people to drop their routines, stay in bed, and do nothing on days they feel like this.
Routine is both disease and cure, but it's an important (essential?) part of what Ernest Becker might call the “Vital Lie” that enables us to keep going.
In Becker’s The Denial of Death, he says everything we do is a distraction so we can forget our ultimate destination to make it through another day—everything from watching TV to writing the immortal novel. When creating something lasting, especially writing the immortal novel, one is perhaps somewhat less oblivious of what they are trying to achieve—to escape death.
Me? I’m on the bus, drafting words that may turn into something, questions unanswered, but there's something else now:
The sun is shining in the windows, and a calm, recorded voice announces the stops in Finnish. Half a dozen other commuters have now joined me on this once-empty bus.
Is it possible that activity is the cure for drift, no matter what it is?
I feel more than one percent better than when I began. I am in the world instead of lost inside my head.
Perhaps I am still drifting, but if I must drift, the world seems a better place to do it than alone.