After weeks and countless hours of surfing the internet, I was overcome by my ambivalence to add yet another blog to an already congested cyberspace that is jam-packed with information about every and any thing that can be tabulated, assessed, anlaysed, summarized, commented on, sold, bought, traded, perveyed, opinioned or in some manner published as essential or valuable to our experience of humanity. Of course, there are really many out there with important, legitimate, educated things to say, things of considerable benefit to those who need to hear about them. I don’t count myself as being in that group. And then there are those who believe that just because they can they should publish their most incoherent, chaotic, private, inner monologues, things that should be reserved only for the pages of personal diaries or the ears of paid professionals. Thankfully, I am not one of those either. This is not going to be a journal about my own private, trivial pet peeves, or arrogant commentary about some social or political issue or serious things like that which I happily leave to more competent individuals. This will start off by being an exercise in disciplining my own mind, and my heart, to delve in to the questions that come up for me in this journey called Life. I am writing this with the assumption that I am writing to a fellow seeker, a fellow pilgrim who I will never see, but somehow through the magic of technology, will be able to reach in cyberspace. Even though I will be writing about something I mostly know (enough) about, I will try not to make it too personal, too idosyncratic, too boring. So far, I have written about nothing, in case you haven’t noticed. I just had to get all that off my chest. I promise that will not happen again.
So, on to some thoughts for the day. I have been overwhelmed lately by the plethora of information that is available to us at the touch of a key. What are we to believe? So many paradigms, so many promises made by the purveyors of that information. Much of the time, the message is that who or what we are is not quite enough. There are always ways we can, and should, improve our lives they say – more toys, better abs, great sex, super smart children, performance-enhanced SUVs, more information/greater understandings, happiness bottled and sold….it’s endless. Stop it all, I want to scream. I want to eject all the subliminal conditionings I have been subjected to that leads to me telling myself that who I am, what I have, where I find myself – all that is not good enough. There is always some place better that I could be, someone better that I could turn into. As if everything in my life thus far amounts to something, but it doesn’t quite cut it. I cannot banish this voice in my head. Even though I have helped many, many people in my work in mental health, raised two amazing children, worked on myself ad nauseaum (a friend once wisely said, “The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over-examined life is UNliveable.”), I feel deep inside somewhat of a failure. Now, I don’t take this that seriously – if I did, it might kill me. I understand where this kind of self-criticism comes from, and don’t give in to it. Instead, I turn my focus on to finding ways to satisfy that longing inside to make sense of my life, to garnish wisdom from the lessons I have had to learn (often involuntarily, for I too would, in my weakness, choose not to suffer adversity), to ask the right questions of myself so that I can feel personally more authentic, but at the same time to be out in the world living and loving, and maybe dancing as often as I can.
One of my favourite philosophers, Sam Keen, wrote this “Human life is a journey whose end is not in sight. Searching, longing and questioning is in our DNA. Who we are and what we will become is determined by the questions that animate us, and by those we refuse to ask. Your questions are your quest. As you ask, so shall you be.”
I shall endeavour to ask the right questions of myself in this journal. The answers may or or not emerge. The deal is to ask, and to live our way into the answers, as Rilke advised. If you happen upon my ramblings and ruminations, I hope you will find something in it that resonates with your own experience. If not, there are always a thousand others who seek or provide a laundry list of how to make things feel better.
