When I was in first grade I remember sitting on the floor of the classroom, having coloring time. I had a sweet Muppet Babies coloring book. One after another I kept breaking my crayons. Not on purpose but because I was pressing too hard, which I was doing because I hated seeing any white space show through. I wanted it to be perfect, ideal, with no room for anything else to exist. It’s this foundation of mind that has been my greatest enemy throughout my life. To refuse to accept things as they are, and as they can generally be, and trying to force how I wanted things to be, unable to deal with reality. Which brings us to recent weeks when, for the third time since 2019, my body has become in such a dither due to my mental formations that I have had to stop working and have been barely speaking. It’s a place I never thought I’d be again, but here we are.

As a child of the 80s, I was raised to be a great consumer, seeking joy and happiness in material goods. What I wasn’t taught by society was how to deal with life, how to look things in the face, say a fact’s a fact and deal with it. Stress doesn’t exist, not as such. Stressors exist, but they only become stress by how we react to them, how we’re able to either accept and work though them, or rebel against them, internalize them, and let them eat us alive. I’ve always been in the latter camp, unfortunately, only able to feel safe and at ease when totally alone and in control of everything. Naturally, that’s no way to live a life but I’ve been doing it for four decades now, and if I keep doing so I have no doubt I won’t make it till my next decade.

So what do we do? I’ve tried many things over the years, some of which have helped, most of which have not, but it’s clear now that even when things helped I only used them to return to dealing with life as I always had done, and it’s that foundation that really needs to change, and what I need most is a sense of meaning. There is no meaning in materialism, no meaning in making more money than you need to meet your needs, no meaning in doing as much as possible, no meaning in rushing on and on and on, always on the next thing and never with the now thing. I’ve found a number of things that have calmed me, but reducing stress to find temporary calm, without increasing meaning, is a losing battle.

The last couple weeks I’ve had to give away my shifts at work and use an app to speak to loved ones because my throat/vocal chords have been so damaged from reflux, which is a consequence of my body being in fight/flight/freeze for so long that basic functions such as proper digestion shut down, all because my mind has been spinning in meaninglessness for years. I got a handle on it for the last couple years, but with this completely unstable, insane administration I knew it would be a huge challenge to stay grounded, find stability while everything around seemed to be on fire, and I was right. It pushed me over the edge and back to where I was before. But, I vowed this time would be different, and it has been.

There are two books I’ve been working my way through lately that have been very helpful. The first is Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I’d never read it before, and honestly knew little about it, but it’s been sitting on my fiance’s nightstand for over a year now so, as it was clear I had a crisis of meaning, I picked it up. I only finished it yesterday but have found it very interesting and certainly applicable. Especially the mentions of how in America the idea persists that you’re supposed to be “happy” and if you’re not something is wrong with you. (To update that to today, you’re supposed to be “happy” and if you’re not you need medication.) This is a ridiculous notion yet it persists. Capitalism doesn’t want truly happy consumers, because true happiness is contentment, and if you’re content you see no need to go out and buy stuff you don’t need. Meaning – that’s what is missing for so many of us, and it’s only gotten worse with social media and our ever increasing obsession with ourselves, rather than seeing ourselves as part of a bigger whole.

The second book is one that I know many people would make fun of me for, and honestly, younger me probably would have too. But younger me wasn’t always the smartest, so there you go. It’s Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948). My mother tells me that my grandfather wore out three copies of this one. Can it be a little silly and dated at times? Absolutely. Does it still contain great wisdom that could make everyone a better person if they applied some of it? Absolutely. Throughout human history it has been recognized that worry literally can kill us. And in no time past were there seemingly so many things to worry about. Perhaps there always were, but the difference now is that we’re exposed to them 24/7 and basically can’t escape. Well screw that, I choose to escape. Not through trying to deny reality, as I did for so long (and was so destructive), but by looking at things head on, calling a spade a spade, and dealing with it. Just picture a world where everyone did that. Bad things will inevitably happen, but if we all dealt with them as they came we’d get rid of so much suffering, all of it unnecessary. I make no bones about it though, that’s not easy, especially when you’ve been raised in this society, always offering a quick fix to any negative feelings. But if you have to keep going to that well over and over again, then it’s not really making anything better. And every time you do so you have to go deeper and deeper, and seek out more and more just to get the same level of feeling. Screw that too.

Meaning is out there, right now. It changes day to day, hour to hour. Finding a meaning to our lives will come at the end, IF we’ve constantly lived in meaningful ways throughout all our days. What’s meaningful for you right now? For me the search for meaning itself is meaningful, a reason to do what I do, a mental shift. We don’t necessary need to change what we’re doing, just see it in the full bright light of reality. Challenge accepted.