The Weight

Some days feel heavier than others, and lately life has felt particularly heavy. This “weight” has come and gone since my late teenage years, and the two things I’ve grown to be able to rely on are that it will pass, and it will return.

What is it about life in these moments that feels so heavy? One through line that has resurfaced again and again is a feeling of overwhelm. Overwhelm about what I’m responsible for, the number of people I feel are relying on me, the fear of things going poorly, or failing. Life, in these moments, takes on a seriousness that permeates my whole experience.

When I was younger, in college through my late 20’s, I would often dream of living out of a van, or living in a cabin along a river. Henry David Thoreau and Chris McCandless were idols of mine in this vagabond-inspired existence. The goal in those years was simplicity; to “front only the essential acts of life” as Thoreau said. The life of the naturalist, of the man who spurned the trappings of the world, of the critic who observed the machinations of the world from afar, transcending the traditional path to live an elevated form of existence, the “good life” that of course was distinctly separate from “life down there” as Thomas Mann’s Hans Castorp would describe it, was my north star. I read Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell, and would spend long nights trying to figure out which path was the life I’d planned, and which path was the life that was waiting for me.

The closest I ever got to getting away from it all was when I spent a few weeks traveling on my own from Denver, Colorado to Los Angeles, where my college roommate was living at the time. I lived out of my car, camped at national parks, and spent the days hiking and exploring on my own. I used a physical guidebook to find places to eat, and I still remember being enamored by just how little I “needed”. The opportunities for spontaneity, to go where I wanted, when I wanted, to stay as long as I liked before moving on, was a freedom I had never experienced before.

What was I after at this time in my life? Or perhaps another question, what was I running from? Upon my return I embarked on a quest to “find myself”, but in reality I was curating an image of myself for the world that I hoped would bring me peace (I didn’t know this is what I was doing at the time, but I now realize this is what I was after). It included nearly a decade of mindfulness meditation practice and a variety of other pursuits that all amounted to the projection of a person who was far wiser than I really was, and allowed my faults and insecurities to be well protected from the world.

As my life moved forward, as I checked off the socially approved boxes of gainful employment, marriage, having kids, buying a house, etc. there was always a part of me that felt like I was playing a part in a movie. Like Sartre’s waiter I found myself acting in ways and making decisions based on what the character I was playing might do. And while I hold no regrets and a deep well of positive regard for my life as it is, I can’t help but look back and wonder what “I” would have done along the way.

If I do have a critique of my own life up to this point it’s that I’ve played it too safe; I took the lessons of Chris McCandless to mean that the abdication of the conventional life would lead to self destruction, and that there was a path for me within “the world down there”. I just needed to find it. And so I’ve been searching, refusing to give in to the voice in my head that wanted to leave the world behind and instead focusing my efforts on finding a sense of balance and coherence within the structure of western society.

The longer I live, and the longer I endure in my efforts and contradictions, I feel more and more strongly that everyone is struggling with these same questions on some level. There are some who find it easier to go along with “the way the world is”, and others who feel the dissonance so acutely that it paralyzes them. But that “weight” as I’ve called it arrives when the dissonance in my own mind reaches a fever pitch; when the sheer absurdity of my existence as it is can no longer be ignored, and I am forced to pull back and disengage. Disengage may not be the right word because what I’ve learned over the years is that the “weight” is not a clue that disengagement is needed per se, but rather it is a sign that I’ve gone too far away from my self. That my pursuit of societal goals has tipped too far and it’s my very soul that is now being harmed.

Now, when the weight returns, I greet it differently; less catastrophizing and jumping to extreme conclusions, and instead driving with the music off and the windows down, or spending a quiet evening away from technology and with a good book, or standing outside in the dark to look at the stars, or going to bed early. I’ve learned that the seriousness that I ascribe to life is just that; my own ascription. It’s not “really” there but instead it’s a clue that my vision is narrowing and I need to widen it again. Because what’s the alternative?

As Mary Oliver asks in the close of The Summer Day:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

— Mary Oliver