It’s been more than six months since my last entry. The hiatus came as a result of some personal difficulties I experienced at the end of May and throughout the summer. Then, a busy Fall semester occupied much of my time and I am only slowly emerging from those labours. Time and hindsight offer a perspective not otherwise apparent in the grip of a personal struggle, and I am now coming to a healthier understanding of those travails.
I started this blog at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an intention to address the psychological stresses that accompany lockdown while reflecting on the social and political convulsions induced by the pandemic. I surmised that the shuttering of everyday activity augured a mental health crisis that would intensify the anxiety already rife in modern society. Thus, I wrote about the salutary effects of solitude, the salubrious contributions of nature to mental well-being. I did not know at the time that I would also fall to a great spasm of pain and doubt, the likes of which I had not experienced in my adult life.
In some academic circles, confessionals are held in bad taste. But since I hold my chopsticks incorrectly and frustrate my dentist with an odd teeth-brushing techniques, I shall continue to eschew the dictates of form and write candidly of my experience.
In a blog entry dated May 12th, 2020, I wrote about the function of contemplative practice: “By recognizing these inevitable turnings, I gain some composure in the face of uncertainty. I am not captive to the torrents that shake the mind, but I ground myself in a capaciousness that contains both the stricken land and the raging storm.” Might it be a curious feature of a mischievous universe that words prompt motions that test the writer’s conviction?
It was at the end of May that I was overtaken by a depressive episode that laid me out flat. I was stretched thin by a range of academic commitments and facing the spectre of post-doc applications. I also received some feedback from a supervisor regarding my dissertation. I took the feedback particularly hard, and found myself reeling in humiliation. However, these external events are merely one side of the equation. Experience arises at the confluence of self and world, so it was also my own conditioning, the weight of internalized habits and perceptions that contributed to the breakdown. I had yoked myself with unkind expectations and pressed too hard against the uncertainties posed by the pandemic. What image of myself as a competent thinker and scholar was suddenly upended; the vestiges of that cherished image crumbled, and the pieces slipped through trembling fingers. I felt completely at a loss, without reserve or recourse.
In that state of despair, I could not shake the sting of disappointment. It was not supposed to be like this, I thought. Collapse is not something that I do, something I could ill-afford. As a contemplative, I was supposed to ride the perturbations and master the malaise. But in that dark night of the soul, I was completely helpless. What happened to the confidence that would maintain composure in the face of uncertainty, the capaciousness that would hold both the land the and storm? In those days of doubt and despair, I consulted what remained of my awareness, and all awareness could say was: “uh oh, you’re in trouble.”
However, in the depths of that struggle, I witnessed another landscape. I saw more clearly that my hope for the future was a story spun by my own insecurity. In the fog of uncertainty, a veil thickened by the pandemic, I clung to dreams of steady ground and pined for assurances of the future. I wanted a job, an academic position, any story that resolved the vertiginous uncertainty of now. And in the absence of those certainties, I looked to my own accomplishments and found them thin, insubstantial. I felt that I had to amass more awards, more publications. Yet, I had duties that awaited me: a research project, several papers to complete, a dissertation to revise, post-doctoral fellowship applications to complete. Under the weight of these expectations, I felt that I was unable to perform the above duties with the requisite care and attention. Further, the feedback from one supervisor challenged my confidence in myself. I had operated under the naïve belief that if I communicated earnestly, I would not be misunderstood, but that illusion was also broken.
One knot rolled into another, and soon I had spun myself into a contorted ball, unable to see, unable to breathe. In that tight and oppressive state, I saw that the condition had me completely. I was not in control. In those days, awareness was not the handy balm that soothed the wounded mind. “Name it to Tame it” is a nifty phrase that describes the effects of mindfulness practice; the act of attention takes away the rough edges of mental valence. However, in those dark days, I could not tame anything. Something had a hold on me, and I was completely at its mercy. And if fighting the malaise was futile, I had to give in.
Give in, but not give up. I let the situation unfurl, and watched the brooding, inner landscape. I realized that the stories I told myself about the future has its own energy, which shapes a teleological arch and supplies the motive forces of action. One needs to have something to live for, even if that story is entirely an arbitrary construction of the imagination. Drawing from Nietzsche, Victor Frankl wrote: “He who has a why can bear almost any how.” When I no longer saw any viable future for myself, when I could no longer see that anything good lied in store, it was as if my soul wilted, my blood drained.
Though I doubted my academic prospects, I also questioned whether I wanted a career in academia. I found the sprawling work exhausting, and had grown tired of the computer, living and dying in front of a screen. I was petrified by the possibility of not having a career in academia, but also cowered at the thought of getting an academic position. And if I didn’t work in academia, what would I do instead? The absence of clues or answers added to the baseline of quiet panic.
Though I did not know how, I would find a way to stay.
In those days of darkness, when I seem to have reached my own wit’s end, I tasted the bitterness of resignation, and felt that I could not go on. I remembered two friends who had taken their own lives and thought: this must be what they felt. On the balcony of my apartment building, I looked at the edge of the railing, the sky just beyond the white bars, and imagined the sensation of flight. To assert one’s own end, I realized, was not an act of spite, nor of capitulation; it was entirely because, despite best intentions, one had exhausted the store and could not muster another iota of will to go on. And in that bleakest of moments, I felt great love and sympathy for all who had taken their own lives. What bitter anguish must have blighted their spirits that they preferred death to another moment’s breathing.
Although I felt the draw of the open air beyond the railing, I could imagine my wife’s face if she found out that I was gone. Her agony was vivid in my mind. I would demolish my own body but also eviscerate her spirit. I would wrench my mother’s heart and leave her despondent in her old age. The thought of their pain proved an anchor. If my absence would destroy those I loved, then my presence must weave some indispensable thread in the fabric of shared life. Jennifer Hecht has argued that our being here means more than we would ever truly know; this was evident through the dislocation and disbelief I felt when I learned of my friends’ suicide. “ The bullet you use to shoot yourself, shatters the biodome,” Hecht writes. To stay, in other words, is an act of fidelity to the world; it is not done for self, but an act of reciprocity to the kindnesses that surround us.
The thought of my wife and mother was a life line. I knew that my being here was a duty to those to whom I was connected. Relationality reached out to me and pulled me in. Though I did not know how, I would find a way to stay.
And though I didn’t know if I could finish a dissertation, or build a career, I was able to walk the dog, empty the compost bin, make coffee, water the plants. The mundane, quotidian activities took on a salvific role in holding me together. I could not live my life, but I could do this in this moment. And when I was walking the dog, my despondency felt a bit different compared to what I felt in the cloistered space of the apartment. A moment later, I made coffee and toast; the sadness felt different again. Even despair has its own course that rises and falls with the movement of the day. To witness these changes is to accommodate a wider breadth of the heart’s many motions, and to learn to accommodate them all.
“When you look at yourself,” Jennifer Hecht says, “and realize that you have fallen in and out of love with the same person, you have fought with friends thinking you’ll never speak to them again, and then you love them again. . . we have different moods that profoundly change our outlook, and it’s not right to let your worst one murder all others.”
The meaning of one’s struggles are not fully known until one lives through the darkness and finds the greater context by which the darkness is defined. A broken heart might be the prelude to a re-invention of self; an illness might initiate a reshuffling of priorities, which in turn gives way to greater clarity and purpose. The freshness of each day’s challenge speaks to all our past journeys, renewing direction and breathing crisp air into the previous days’ labours. In order to see through the gift of darkness, we must abide in the darkness’ own timing, patient and attentive. This is an attention not borne of endurance and tenacity, but of relaxing and resting in the abyss of unknowing.
“Your story is not over,” says Dwayne Johnson. The valleys will give way to peaks, but you have to be around to witness them.
So, soften and sink into the darkness that now holds you. Rather than a maleficent presence, darkness can be a nurturing nest. Trust yourself to do what it required for the care of the soul. Eat cheesecake. Dare to play guitar on a Tuesday night. Sleep in. Let go of all the “shoulds” and “oughts” that twist you out of shape. Find ways to laugh and let go of this uptight comportment that must have everything just so. The world is broken, and always has been. Learn to tread lightly, skip a few steps, hum a tune. Look at this storm cloud and meet yourself with compassion; then, without trying to solve anything, give yourself a little poke and chuckle. Then, in whatever way you need to, carry on for another day. And another after that.
(This entry was originally written in December, 2020)