Wandering
Can you choose to not feel some things, but feel others? It seems like you can either feel everything, or feel nothing. If there's a trick to only feeling some things, but feeling the rest, I haven't found it.
There are all of these terrifying, horrifying things that I work very hard not to feel, not to be consumed by, not to be angry about, because there's no end to it. They aren't going to get better. If I could just feel them and be consumed and have them "over", that would be one thing, but they return every day, it never ends, it never goes away.
To choose to live outside of these things, to pursue something else...certainly that's a risk. But at the same thing, there seems to be little in life that has worth, that has meaning. It's just all stuff and nonsense, just the things that we fill life with between birth and death. I can't manage to grasp other things which at some level resonate with me, with who I am.
If it doesn't matter if things resonate, then sure, I can spend my entire life working, doing chores, watching TV shows with my wife, just doing whatever I need to do to fill that time until my heart finally seizes and stops. Certainly, this isn't an unusual way of ordering one's life.
Maybe that's where we get into that Buddhist way of detachment. I enjoy what there is to enjoy when it comes, I seek no further purpose or meaning from any of life, and it just moves past me like a river until the end. Who am I to demand more? What reason is there, outside of our American culture of individual worship and consumerism, to expect that I should have anymore?
I'm sure that there are many people who spend their lives unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, empty, coming apart at the seams. And then they're killed in a revolution, or by robbers, or in a natural disaster, or after a life of quiet desperation.
It seems like this Aeon Zoe should lead to more, but it doesn't. There are better things happening, but not to me, not in a way that I can engage with. Everything is a block, a fact, to be accepted as existing without experiencing it in any meaningful way.
I'm frightened that if, for instance, I got on antidepressants, and it made me able to feel again, that I would actually becoming horrifyingly sad or depressed precisely because of the nature of the things that I'm dealing with? What if I'm better off not feeling anything, not being able to take comfort, then being able but not having any real access?
It's so hard to quantify this. For the last couple of decades, my life has just been shaped of things which fill the periods between depressive episodes. I'm not happy, I don't enjoy things, I don't have fun. I just fill the time, and occasionally have a semi-enjoyable experience. I strive for contentment, but more often simply occupy exhaustion.
And nobody has any answers. Lots of prayers. Are the prayers doing any good? Have they kept me from greater depths?
Oh Lord, My Lord
as I dwell in this desert landscape
where I have lived for so long
I call out to you
but I do not know why
What do I call on you for
Oh Lord?
Should I be content to live here?
Am I merely a tool for your use
to help others who dwell in the desert?
Are you in fact in need
of servants who can subsist in the desert and thus reach others who are lost there?
Is there any end to the desert?
What is Hope, Oh Lord?
That I might be useful to you?
That I might fulfill some purpose?
You are good, Oh Lord, but your goodness is beyond me
It happens in some distant land
which I may not occupy
across that river
which I have never seen.
How long will I wander, oh Lord?
Am I foolish to believe, to suspect
that there is life outside of wandering
for me?
How resolved should I be
to my foolishness
Oh Lord?
Is there any wisdom in my foolishness?
How should I learn not to hope, not to believe?
How should I learn to deny cool waters
to ignore oasis
to trudge ever deeper into the sands?
What is my place, my purpose, Oh Lord?
Or is my purpose in not knowing my purpose
in embracing the wandering?
It's so dry here, so empty.
I dream of trees and forests
but the sand awaits.
There are all of these terrifying, horrifying things that I work very hard not to feel, not to be consumed by, not to be angry about, because there's no end to it. They aren't going to get better. If I could just feel them and be consumed and have them "over", that would be one thing, but they return every day, it never ends, it never goes away.
To choose to live outside of these things, to pursue something else...certainly that's a risk. But at the same thing, there seems to be little in life that has worth, that has meaning. It's just all stuff and nonsense, just the things that we fill life with between birth and death. I can't manage to grasp other things which at some level resonate with me, with who I am.
If it doesn't matter if things resonate, then sure, I can spend my entire life working, doing chores, watching TV shows with my wife, just doing whatever I need to do to fill that time until my heart finally seizes and stops. Certainly, this isn't an unusual way of ordering one's life.
Maybe that's where we get into that Buddhist way of detachment. I enjoy what there is to enjoy when it comes, I seek no further purpose or meaning from any of life, and it just moves past me like a river until the end. Who am I to demand more? What reason is there, outside of our American culture of individual worship and consumerism, to expect that I should have anymore?
I'm sure that there are many people who spend their lives unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, empty, coming apart at the seams. And then they're killed in a revolution, or by robbers, or in a natural disaster, or after a life of quiet desperation.
It seems like this Aeon Zoe should lead to more, but it doesn't. There are better things happening, but not to me, not in a way that I can engage with. Everything is a block, a fact, to be accepted as existing without experiencing it in any meaningful way.
I'm frightened that if, for instance, I got on antidepressants, and it made me able to feel again, that I would actually becoming horrifyingly sad or depressed precisely because of the nature of the things that I'm dealing with? What if I'm better off not feeling anything, not being able to take comfort, then being able but not having any real access?
It's so hard to quantify this. For the last couple of decades, my life has just been shaped of things which fill the periods between depressive episodes. I'm not happy, I don't enjoy things, I don't have fun. I just fill the time, and occasionally have a semi-enjoyable experience. I strive for contentment, but more often simply occupy exhaustion.
And nobody has any answers. Lots of prayers. Are the prayers doing any good? Have they kept me from greater depths?
Oh Lord, My Lord
as I dwell in this desert landscape
where I have lived for so long
I call out to you
but I do not know why
What do I call on you for
Oh Lord?
Should I be content to live here?
Am I merely a tool for your use
to help others who dwell in the desert?
Are you in fact in need
of servants who can subsist in the desert and thus reach others who are lost there?
Is there any end to the desert?
What is Hope, Oh Lord?
That I might be useful to you?
That I might fulfill some purpose?
You are good, Oh Lord, but your goodness is beyond me
It happens in some distant land
which I may not occupy
across that river
which I have never seen.
How long will I wander, oh Lord?
Am I foolish to believe, to suspect
that there is life outside of wandering
for me?
How resolved should I be
to my foolishness
Oh Lord?
Is there any wisdom in my foolishness?
How should I learn not to hope, not to believe?
How should I learn to deny cool waters
to ignore oasis
to trudge ever deeper into the sands?
What is my place, my purpose, Oh Lord?
Or is my purpose in not knowing my purpose
in embracing the wandering?
It's so dry here, so empty.
I dream of trees and forests
but the sand awaits.