I went on a retreat this weekend with River folks to a camp in the mountainous woods (okay, maybe not the right usage of words but whatever) between San Jose and Santa Cruz. The route there was about the same as the one taken for Justin and Miki's camping trip to Big Basin last year up to a certain point, and it invoked a few old memories from last year (including me getting owned by a root on a hiking trail, but that's another story). Overall, it was a great opportunity to take a moment to relax, away from the hustle and bustle-or sometimes lack thereof- of working life and coming home tired and wittling the night hours away on Fallout 2, which was pretty much all I did last week.
(...seriously, the old Fallout games are like a time sinkhole once you figure out how to not get massacred by every random radscorpion and evil plant and big gun wielding band of thugs you meet. Where I last left off I was trying to figure out how to become a made man of each of the 4 ruling families of New Reno without getting killed off by the other three for siding with their rivals, and then how to assassinate the family heads after joining them. It's fun.)
The speaker at this retreat was Dave Schmelzer, the author of the book Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist and former pastor at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boston, which I knew little of prior to this weekend. When it comes to books that tend to get sold at the "book table" at these retreats like his book, I tend to have a like/dislike interest in them. They usually have something interesting to say, but at the same times there's always something else about them I don't like as much, like some aspect they overlook in what they're saying that merits criticism or just something in their argument that's lacking. Dave's book on the other hand (which I haven't finished yet), seems to fit in a weird niche of being more rambly-thought-tangential than usual but in a way that still makes sense, which also happens to be how he speaks in person as well. It also partly addresses a topic I find personally relevant - the disconnect in thoughts between religious and non-religious people, only not so much black-and-white because like everything else these fall along a spectrum.
Dave refers to the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's 4 stages of spiritual development, which surprisingly makes sense (at least to me) as a model for understanding where people stand spiritually (although I'm curious as to what criticism there may be of it since relying too much on models like these tends to be a slippery slope. cue the rampant and incessant discussion of Myers-Briggs whenever I hang around church folks). It categorizes this in a way such that atheists and agnostics, particularly those who have left a faith, are possibly actually more developed in this respect than many of those who consider themselves religious... which would explain why some religious populations (as in America) feel more backwards in thought. It also delves into why people on both sides have issues communicating with each other - the disconnect between people who are at different stages of development. It's an interesting concept - although granted, even Dave admitted that it's normal to still have thoughts from previous stages even when someone is supposedly at stage 4.
Dave also referenced the famous "This Is Water" commencement speech of David Foster Wallace, an author I've been meaning to read for a while if I ever get around to it, who's been called the voice of our post-modern age and whose posthumously published work The Pale King was a factor into why the Pulitzer Prize for fiction wasn't awarded last year. If you have the time, it's worth a listen. It addresses something I've been finding more personally relevant ever since I started working: the importance of being conscious in spite of the mundane and the frustration that generally accompanies everyday adult life. To be able to consider other points of view and modes of thinking besides the lens of self, to have agency in choosing what exactly it is you think about, because what's important isn't so much possessing knowledge as it is simply being aware of what's in front of you... and not just get lost in the stream of your own internal monologue, which I'm almost always guilty of on a regular basis. But David Foster Wallace words it better than I can.
It's funny, because on the way to the retreat while driving, I was just thinking about this. How unconscious I've been the past while, constantly on auto-pilot in my responses to people and motion through life without consideration of bigger things, with the majority of my days of late revolving around thoughts of some form of "how am I going to finish this game this week" and nothing else. I've been neglecting personal responsibilities, what I'm doing with my life, where I am with God, and a bunch of other concerns all for the sake of entertaining myself just one more day. One more day, when days can turn into weeks and then years, where a subtle disease like cancer could spring up out of nowhere and end it all when I least expect it. Okay, maybe I'm being somewhat melodramatic and border-line hypochondriac there, but the fear exists. I don't know when my life will end, and yet I'm trudging on waiting for another day to go by at work so I can go home, while silently ignoring that voice in my head yelling, "what are you doing with your life?"
This weekend was a time for me to stop constantly moving for a moment and reconsider the trajectory my life has taken. How long can I keep sitting around here at this job and continue the humdrum routine I've been following for the past two years? How long am I going to continue to let these burdens continue to weigh me down, stop me from moving on with my life, continue to make me grumble inside and cynically complain whenever a worship song is playing? How long am I going to keep on pursuing random entertainment for the sake of a short-term distraction, an activity to keep me occupied from reexamining my thoughts and beliefs and face concerns I've neglected over the years? How much longer?
I realized eventually that when it came down to it, much of my lack of action in a direction I would find meaningful up to this point stems from an overwhelming sense of fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of not knowing the truth, fear of lacking control over my future, fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of missing out. I settled for where I am now because it's the safe thing to do. I grew up with the view that the world was a scary place and that I should avoid risky situations and dangers and trusting people too much, and instead favor stability and comfort over anything else. And while that isn't an overtly bad way of life in itself, overemphasizing it tends to make life feel static and devoid of, ironically, life.
If anything, what I ought to be most afraid of is living a dead, unexamined life. If I take a look at the journal entries I've actually managed to write this past year, most of them are hardly joyful and instead tend toward being anxious or cynical. I ought to have plenty of reason to be happy or even thankful for the experiences I've been having, given how "busy" I somehow seem to be this year, but for some reason the main feeling I can recall experiencing from these past two years is an overall sense of anxiety and cynicism. I stopped believing that God would actually do anything in the problems I continued to see in myself and others and the world on a day-to-day basis. I stopped really praying for anything. I lost confidence in my own ability to maintain meaningful friendships with anyone I met given a lack of consistency in having even normal conversations. I went through a debilitating series of depressive moments earlier this year that led me at one point to drive to work (and then McDonald's) at 4 in the morning because I couldn't sleep anymore. I would frequently find myself somewhere, whether it be at church or at a social gathering or some other event, and wondering, "what am I even doing here?" I was even afraid of going to this retreat because I might just suffer that same thought the entire time I was there. What am I doing here. What am I doing here. What am I doing here.
After all of this, I'm just tired right now. Tired of not really living life. All that I have now, all this so-called convenience and privilege and comfort and job security and complacency means nothing if I can't enjoy it. The numbers of reasons for why I might be dissatisfied right now are too great and overwhelming as it is, although it could probably be easily summed together somewhere along the lines of, "suffering exists." But that's no excuse for not standing up, looking back at it in the face, unflinching, and continuing to live consciously, meaningfully, and with purpose. I'm making a commitment to live each day in the moment, and not solely for my own self-interest. Of course, it'll more difficult to keep up than just saying it would suggest, and I don't really have that great of a track record with commitments so far. Staying conscious everyday in itself is enough of a struggle as it is - even David Foster Wallace committed suicide. But that's how it goes sometimes, I guess.
Following along with my thought that there's a song from a musical for every occasion, there's a musical called Merrily We Roll Along whose opening song ties into this theme (and is probably my favorite musical that I haven't seen live yet now, ever since I finally saw Into the Woods this summer). The title and lyrics say it all. Merrily we roll along. How did you get to be here? What was the moment? When I was feeling depressed earlier this year, I kept coming back to the songs from this musical: Merrily We Roll Along, Like It Was, Old Friends, Not a Day Goes By, Now You Know - all of them cautious reminders of how easy it is for your life to fall off track if you don't pay attention as time goes by. At least you can still fix things and try for your dreams while there's still time... while you're still alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment