TRANSCRIPT
I was recently having a conversation with an old friend of mine, and he was sharing with me about his life. We were catching up. He was telling me about his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his kids, how things are going with his job, his career, how things are going with his house (he owns a house). He has a couple of cars. He was telling me about his bills, his mortgage. All the different things that he’s doing: getting his kids to school, participating in their after-school activities. He’s an incredibly busy person. Actually, it’s pretty hard to talk to him ’cause he’s so busy. He can fit me into little slots when we have an occasional conversation.
Now, I was comparing my life to his, and I was thinking, “I have no wife, no girlfriend, no regular job. Not really a career right now. I do work a bit, do all sorts of different things. But it’s not a structured career. I don’t have a house, I don’t have a mortgage. Don’t even have an apartment that’s mine. I actually do a lot of bouncing around and traveling, and I really didn’t have anything on paper that he has that’s externally defined structure; the things that society deems as sort of ‘regular things’ for somebody my age to have.
And I was thinking about, “What’s the result of that in my life versus his life?” Now, I have a lot of free time. I have a lot of openness. Because I don’t have a lot of externally defined structure in my life, I can basically do anything. I can go anywhere. I can move all around. I can do all sorts of different things, and he really can’t. Yet the difference is he is a lot more comfortable in his life. And I think there really is something to be said in terms of having a more comfortable and peaceful life in a lot of ways for having a lot of structure.
What I think for myself, what I’ve observed over a long period of time, is when I don’t have a lot of externally defined structure, what ends up happening is my relationship, my own inner self comes out. It comes to the forefront of my life. It comes to the forefront of my existence, and I think about it. I contemplate it. I feel it. It can actually be very difficult, and it’s actually very challenging. Because what I have is a life that is not being defined by the things that I’m doing necessarily in the world. My life is being defined by my inner feelings, by what’s coming up for me. I actually deal with my traumas a lot more, my history, my feelings about what happened to me in my past. The direction I’m going comes up a lot more for me. Also, all sorts of existential questions come up, like what is the meaning of my life?
When I think about this particular friend, and lots of other friends of mine and people that I know in my life who have a lot of externally defined structure, there often isn’t a lot of time for them to contemplate their existence, to contemplate the meaning of their lives. Because they’ve got so many other things to do. Their attention is so diverted by all the things they do, and even if they did start thinking about their existence, they pretty much have to come back to reality pretty quickly because they’ve got a lot of bills to pay. They’ve got a lot of things to do. They’ve got all sorts of responsibilities.
Well, for me, not having that, what’s left is my relationship with my existence; these questions about the meaning of life. It’s probably why I’m coming here and making these videos. It’s a chance for me to publicly express what I’m going through and maybe being useful to some other people who are also going through some of these existential questions.
I also wonder how many people who go through these existential dilemmas, existential questions, a lot of existential pain, who don’t have a lot of external structure in their life, external things to define them, actually become artists. Because art is a way to create meaning in this existence, ways to symbolize these internal questions, to symbolize this internal journey, this internal conflict. And I think it can be very useful because I’ve talked to people who do a lot of art, and a lot of times the people who are doing art aren’t people that have a very busy external life. They’re not actually super plugged into society, and a lot of times it helps, I think, to be unplugged from society to have time to do a lot of art, to do painting, to create a lot of music, to do a lot of writing, to do a lot of thinking, to do a lot of contemplating on the meaning of existence; a lot of things that artists do. And I think about that for myself.
Now, I also remember when I first became a therapist. At that point, when I first became a therapist, I had just come out of a period of about five years of a largely structureless existence, and it was so painful. So many times during that five years before I became a therapist, it was like, “What am I doing with my life?” The questions I asked myself, the torment that I went through, the loneliness that I had. It was really hard. Now, I valued it. In some ways, I loved it. I loved my freedom. I loved the structurelessness of my life. I loved the unpredictability. I loved the chance that I had real options to do all sorts of different things. But it was also kind of desperate in a way. Sometimes it really wasn’t fun. In some ways… yeah, I wish a lot of people would try it because they probably learned a lot. But at the same time, I wouldn’t wish some of the hard times on anyone.
Yet I remember when I became a therapist, when I first went to Social Work school, it was to a two-year graduate program. And anyway, after that, I was gonna have to do a three-year internship. There was going to be a lot of structure ahead of me. It was such a relief, and that relief actually lasted for me for many, many years, and it was very, very comforting. It actually quelled a lot of my existential questions.
Well, I notice now, I guess I must be strong to be able to live without a lot of that external structure. But it’s definitely not an easy existence. It can be very, very painful. I value it. I wonder how long it’ll last before I start bringing external structure back into my life. But one thing for me that has been very, very important, and it’s been this way for over 20 years for me, is that if I am going to bring external structure into my life (girlfriend, wife, home, job, career; all these different things that might come back into my life again), I want it to come back into my life not because I’m afraid of dealing with my internal world, not because I’m afraid of dealing with my existential questions, but because instead… my internal questioning, my self-reflective process, my existential journey has brought me to the next level of my life where I actually want to do something that requires ‘plugging in’ externally.
And I don’t know how common that is because I think a lot of people, when they create external structure in their lives, all these different things that external structure can be related to: wife, kids, home, car, career, job, all these different things. I don’t think they’re doing it as the result of their internal existential questing. Sometimes yes, but a lot of times I think they’re doing it just because it’s terrifying to go inside! And they don’t want to deal with it!
So I wonder, I don’t know where my path is going. I wonder what’s going to happen to me. I’m really not sure, but I’m trying to keep my options open and giving myself a lot of time to go within, to be within, and to explore this thing called existence.