"What's the Point?"

I’ve really struggled to know what to write about this month…

And truthfully, I have put it off so long I figured I might just not write anything. Every idea has been met with a creeping question—what’s the point?

This question hasn’t arisen inside me with this kind of force or persistence in a long time. It used to ride shotgun beside me, day in and day out, successfully extinguishing ideas, impulses, and creativity with a heavy dose of anxiety and fear. I spent many years wrestling with the part of me that asks this question and eventually, we came into an agreement. That part of me gets to stay, but I have to listen to what it is really trying to tell me.

I know now that this is the question I start to ask when I am struggling to feel connected to others and my true Self.

When I’m tired, burned out, grieving, or have been witness to suffering I can't make sense of, and I don’t tend to these feelings, this existential thought—what’s the point?—emerges.

Often before tending to this internal struggle, I’ll try to distract myself. For example, I've put two dozen jumpsuits in an online shopping cart and visit them like pets regularly, watched the trailers for numerous reality TV shows including one called My Feet Are Killing Me, and spent hours planning my escape through international house hunting on Zillow. Frankly, I think it's fine to indulge in some distraction, at least for a little while. Eventually though, I have to turn inward and take a look at what’s up to get any meaningful relief.

So, this month has been time doing just that, tending to these parts that are feeling beleaguered and sad. It isn’t glamorous. There’s no ‘how to’ for me to share in an instagram post. It’s just the slow work of being human and riding the waves that come along with that.

Speaking of waves, I once spent some time with a surfer who also happened to be a psychoanalyst. He was in his 70’s, really tall with a kind face and worn-out Chuck Taylor’s. He’d been a therapist for a long time and was really good at it. Over the years he had spent a lot of time with all kinds of people asking themselves and him, what’s the point? What’s the point, when you feel like shit and the world is on fire? Or when life has handed you something unexpected that you are pretty certain you cannot handle? Or when you’re lonely, angry, or feeling powerless—or all of the above?

He told me, “You know, people come to us therapists, because they wish for us to take away their pain. What an understandable thing to want. What they don’t realize is, our job is to help them learn how to suffer.” 

Well, that is the truth. Pain is inevitable. But, we have a say in how we suffer through each loss or painful experience.

I'm noticing as I write this that The Question is fading…

Reaching out across an email to say, I see you, I hear you, I know you suffer too, reminds me of our shared humanity. Our connection, even in this pain, invites me to see beyond what hurts to the incredible ways the people around me do love and community and healing. And something deep inside tells me that that is the point.

Until next time.