How did we end up here?

Why we didn’t see our lives turning out this way.

The warmth radiates as you hear the crickets chirping and the birds singing. Slouching into your chair as you watch the sun set on another week, your verandah bathed in sunlight and a dried dark red stain around the wine glass next to you. On the surface, all seems well, yet you’re bugged by a single thought, a thought you even question why you’re having in the first place: “I didn’t think I’d be here at this point in my life.”

Just like that, the birds have suddenly stopped singing, the sky is dark, and you’re not outside at all, but waking up in the sweats in your bed. You check over at the clock, and it reads 2:47am. Too early to get up, but you can’t get back to sleep, so you are forced to lay there in a pool of your own existential dread. Your mind races from “why did my life turn out this way?”, to, “how did I end up here at this point?” You proceed to spend the rest of your sleep-deprived day at work, your “job”, already physically and mentally drained yet hoping for some respite from your own thoughts. You get home, fatigued, and try to get an early night to make up for the previous night, however, this isn’t the tiredness cured by (more) sleep.

“Some people will exert more effort trying to run from themselves or avoid/suppress self-awareness and difficult questions, than actually answering the call.”

When your life turns out a certain way, it can hit you like a bus. You never thought it’d be you – it would always happen to somebody else, but not you. The only thing you find in the bottle of vino rosso is conditioned comfort. Part of living a good life is knowing when to quit and when to persevere. It is equally important not to give up at the first hurdle as it is to be aware when you’re stubbornly persisting out of naïve hope, blind optimism, denial or wilful ignorance.

The existential crisis point/s in one’s life is usually marked by three (3) types of questions:

What am I doing?

Where am I going?

Who am I?

Obviously, that last question is the crux of everything, really. The first two are subsequent questions that flow from one to the other – for you must know where you are to know where you are going – and come with the implied “how did I get here in the first place?”

Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash.

One must look over their regrets, if any, and bring to light the parts where bitterness and resentment are poisonously seeping in and rotting you from the inside out.

As one ages the idea of starting over/again becomes less and less appealing for numerous reasons, but no less important. Comfort, security, and opportunity cost play a role, in accompaniment with responsibilities, in preventing this process, along with being “too tired for revolution.”  Losing our societal standing is another possible reason, in conjunction with mocking or derision.

It’s not uncommon for people to feel like they’re not in control of their life. If you don’t feel you have control of your life i.e. personal agency, you just submit to your circumstances and believe things cannot and will not get better. And then years go by. The aforementioned is not a conscious choice, but an unconscious submission of your will. Ask yourself this: Have you really tried?

“You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” – Alan Watts

This isn’t about acting randomly or living in a constant state of chaos and frequent change, but reclaiming that sense of agency, and becoming aware of how much of you is defined by you and how much is being defined by other people/their expectations. This is about re-defining your life (emphasis on the “re-”) on your own terms, just terms.

Photo by Lei Hwang on Unsplash.

I more than understand that cost of living is acting like a bit of a dictator at the moment – deciding what people can and can’t do. I can’t help but feel our current societal situation keeps people on the hamster wheel of chasing more money even at the “cost” of other things (more important or beneficial or better for one’s health). This is out of need or to escape the need. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on $80,000 or $800,000 a year, 1) you’ll always be able to find some justification for chasing more money, and 2) you’ll always have more/new problems.

Meaning ameliorates the suffering of life, but, for the courage to live one’s true life, sacrifices must be made. This may include who you used to be and who you have around you. I wish you luck.

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