I knew this day would come. I knew that the trajectory I was on would lead me here, and I’ve known it for years. Turning 50 was the crisis point for me, and I’ve been fighting it off ever since. It’s been exacerbated by Tracy’s demand of me earlier this spring, but that’s only part of it.

I knew the day would come when “doing” wouldn’t be enough. Whether it was through age or disease, or accident, we all arrive sooner or later where doing becomes impossible and we are left only with ourselves, not the results of our labours. To derive identity from behaviour is shallow at best, and yet as a man raised by blue-collar parents in the modernist tradition, doing had become a key part of my identity. I’ve worked a lot on my spiritual self despite this, and have come a long way from the young man I once was, but over the years I’ve still taken great pride in my accomplishments and abilities.
But we are not what we do, and after seeing my dad needlessly die soon after retirement, I thought I knew better than hanging something as important as identity on such an ephemeral frame. It turns out that once again I was wrong.

Tracy also made the mistake of correlating the person with behaviour, and pressed me this spring to switch more of my efforts from the esoteric ideals that were occupying me, to something more pragmatic. In a period of stress and confusion she came to the conclusion that greater financial wealth would make her happier, and she requested that I do something to bring that about. Loving her as I did I agreed, although I knew that it was a hopeless errand; we had both been down that road many times, always to the same outcome, usually at great cost to me.
I argued for awhile, pointing out the lessons of history, but at such times rational arguments simply don’t carry the day and she needed evidence yet again that our happiness had little to do with the amount of money in our bank accounts. I knew that I would pay a steep price for that money, but if she still hadn’t learned that crucial lesson, if she needed to witness it one more time, what greater gift could I possibly give her?
So I tightened my belt and ploughed forward and made a significant amount of money for us, with about an equal amount going into and supporting the local economy. I turned away from my life to play a role for her, hoping that in the end it would all be worth it. I became yet another classic banality, a man exchanging his life for money.
I enjoyed the work I did. My son and a friend and I worked together for a while, which was very rewarding. I learned a lot and challenged myself, but my days were spent outside myself, focussing on what needed to be done. I was making deals, taking care of responsibility, and generally operating a business with the kind of attention and detail and labour I felt a business needed. Of course there was also a great deal of stress.
As the weeks went by and the bank account grew, bit by bit I declined. I ignored this and kept on, determined to be successful. Money came in and money went out. By the time I went sailing a month ago, I was a shadow. I hoped the cruise would revive me, but it was not to be. I had lost touch with myself.

Tracy is very concerned for me, and begged me last night to stop doing the work. She told me it’s like watching me die inside, that she can hardly connect with me anymore. I know what she means; I can hardly hear myself these days. I had an vision come to me the other day that I was done here, that the only step remaining to me was to leave my empty body behind and move on to spirit. I’m not sure what that meant, and there are a lot of possible interpretations. Strange thing was that the revelation wasn’t frightening, that it felt quite matter-of-fact. A relief even. Being had become so very burdensome.

Part of me feels ashamed that the act of making a living that so many embrace without question had become anathema to me, had become so personally destructive. Over and again I’ve tried this with various careers, and it simply doesn’t work; I get the job done, but always at tremendous personal cost.
But it is what it is. In general, I’ve long since given up trying to be what I’m not, and I avoid condemning myself for not meeting certain cultural expectations. I would love to be like everyone, but I’m not. In fact, I’m not so sure that others don’t pay a similar price, but they might just be unaware of the spiritual cost. I was surprised that Tracy asked me to try again as she had walked down this path with me many times, but there you go.

It’s not her fault that I’ve arrived at this place; I chose to comply with a process that I knew would end bad for me. I also still dream of being fulfilled while making money; it is after all a phantom I’ve chased all my life. It’s also not unreasonable for a woman to ask for this although I had made it clear to her, explained to her at our reconciliation, that while I would bring a great deal to our relationship, money would be irregular at best. Not from lack of desire, but from temperament.
It’s hard to describe where I’ve ended up, but for the first time I don’t see a future, don’t see a way forward. It feels like I’ve done it all, or done all that matters at any rate. Anything left to do would differ in degree not kind. And even if there were truly novel efforts left, what I’ve also learned is that when you do things, when you accomplish things, not much changes. The sun rises as it always did and life carries on as it did before. Goals are good in themselves, but insufficient.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are endless things still to be done that would be valuable, inspiring, and meaningful to me. There is much I can do to elevate my mood, like getting back to the gym and going for walks. But that’s not the point. I don’t want to just do something to mask this existential void. What we do must emerge from the innermost self, rather than create a self from what we do. I’m afraid that the latter has been much of my life’s path, and as I said at the beginning of this post, I’ve always dreaded the day when I couldn’t make the next step.

Tracy’s request of me this spring showed the ultimate futility of action being self. I sucked myself drying while doing, and in the end found that there was nothing left. Can you hear the crickets?
The one thing I’ve never done in this life is nothing. I’ve never stopped, believing that to stop is to die. Perhaps I was right, but when moving seems pointless, there’s nothing left but to stare stillness in the eye, and wait.

Feeling a bit restless last night, I tuned in to a couple of TED talks seeking inspiration. To make things easy they list talks by broad categories, one of which is naturally, Inspiration.
Either it is a category yard to define or simply that most talks fall outside that spectrum, because most of the talks had been there for some time, with only a few new ones that sounded interesting to me.
What I typically look for are talks that discuss how to live a meaningful life, as I find it interesting to hear what these idealised cultural figures have divined on the subject. So far it’s been a little disappointing, but you never know when you will find insight so I check in now and then.

I listened to a couple, and their themes were based on goal setting and obtainment. This is not to be surprised at because in the West the dominant view is that life is an aesthetic that is meant to be assembled by the owner of that life according to their own values and interests. Like planting a garden or building a house. In this view, life is a verb and a personal responsibility.
Like most of my cultural cohort I have followed this path diligently for all of my adult life; I have set future goals and did what I could to obtain them. I may even be a more extreme example than most, because I’ve spent many years deeply focused on some mythical, grand future. In my youth there was a great deal of person struggle, and It was always hope and vision of what life could be that allowed me to weather periods of intense depression and mental illness. I always believed that someday it would get better, and fantasized at length on what that better would look like. As in those TED talks, I set goals and exercised all the resources at my disposal to make the grand future come about.

As it turns out, I was mistaken. While my life is undoubtedly far, far more at peace now, I suspect that little of that has come about due to the actual goals I set for myself. Through a lot of hard work I essentially evolved out of my younger emotional issues, but most of my goals reflected ideas of a better life; the structure of how things would look and what I would do. Hence the numerous careers, the three degrees, the swapping of life partners in the middle of a marriage. I’ve gone here and there and up and down and each time after the dust settled, I found myself largely where I was when I began.
All that really changed after all those years of accumulating experience was my own store of wisdom. You cannot strive for things without learning in the process. And that’s what these TED talks are missing: the goals themselves –whatever they are – are irrelevant. Obtaining the things I’ve obtained matter very little; it was the struggle to obtain them where I learned about myself, the world, and our mutual limitations and strengths. It’s the journey that goals take you on is where their real value lies, especially when the journey takes you down roads you’ve never traveled.

I have a dear friend who I’ve watched struggle with developing a new and challenging entrepreneurial career. For many months he has tilted against his dream trying this and that, seemingly to little avail. To most the effort would appear a flop and to continue would be simply flogging a dead horse – or more accurately, a stillborn horse in that it never lived to begin with.

But that’s looking at it simply from a career standpoint, an economic standpoint, which to my mind is missing the true value of any real effort. This man has challenged himself from here to Sunday and has learned so much and evolved so far you would hardly recognise him from 18 months ago. His relationships have changed dramatically, especially the one with himself. Despite the outward appearance of failure, his growth and development is something beyond price, and a wealth he can never lose. If he had been materially successful in his effort but stayed where he was emotionally 2 years ago, it would have been a tragedy.

John Lennon described it succinctly when he said that life happens “When you are making other plans.” To get the most out of life therefore requires one to make the journey as astounding, rich and dynamic as possible, not the shortest path to the imagined holy grail. Achieving what you want is a thin reward compared to the richness achieved when we take the mysterious, unknown path.