I’m starting this blog to answer a single question: what is the meaning of my life? I realize that probably sounds ridiculous. Read on, and ridiculous might be the kindest thing you think of me. You might think I’m a whiner. Or a spoiled brat. Or you might think this is just some self-centered, self-inflated quest for attention. I don’t blame you if you think any of these things. But I’m honestly doing this for one reason, and one reason alone.
I’m fucking miserable.
I don’t have any reason to be (and here’s where the spoiled brat thing comes in). I have a beautiful wife who I love and who, incredibly, loves me back. My kid is… awesome. I’ve got a good job, a nice house, my health… . The list goes on and on.
When I turned 40, I felt great, but the past two years have been a slow and steady downward spiral. First came the physical signs - the pains in my ankle and shoulder that made it hard to exercise, the throbbing hip that woke me up in the middle of the night. I started obsessing over my graying hair, cursing my failing eyesight. No matter how different these signs were, they all seem to be saying the same thing, “you, my friend, are getting OLD.” Worse though, was the fact that I’ve found myself grappling with issues that I thought I had well in hand years ago. I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable in social situations. I keep revisiting interactions in my head, over and over, sure that everything I said and did was stupid. And I’m definitely withdrawing. Not wanting to talk on the phone and being piss-poor at staying in touch with friends is kind of normal for me. But lately I know I’ve been much less available for Sue and Taidgh too. And all of this has this horrible cyclical nature to it – I feel like crap, which makes me withdraw, which makes me feel like crap…
I’m having a midlife crisis. But my crisis isn’t one of sports cars or affairs. My midlife crisis is a place where all my old issues – feeling useless and unloved – are colliding with the sense that it’s all downhill from here. Right now I feel old, and weary, and achy, and empty, and hollow. And I’m pretty sure that each day is going to be worse than the next, and when I die, it will be in the depths of the worst loneliness and uselessness I’ve ever felt.
I know I sound hopeless, but I think I know what I need to do. The cure to all this hopelessness has to be meaning, and it’s a meaning I’m currently lacking. Oh, there are things I know to be very important to how I want to live my life. I want to be a good husband and father, and want to leave some positive mark on the world around me. But if someone were to ask “what is the meaning of your life?” none of these things by themselves suffice as an answer. The fact is, I don’t have an answer. Not yet, anyway.
So that’s the point of this blog. I’m 42 years old. And I’m fucking miserable. But I know I don’t have to stay that way. Meaning has to be the cure for hopelessness. So for the next year, I want to make sure I’m spending time trying to find the answer to that question. I’ll admit that even as I type this, I’m filled with skepticism – a sense that my project is doomed to fail even before it has begun. It could fail because I fail to find meaning, or (more likely) because I fail to keep trying to find it. But all I can do right now is START, so I’ll start with the idea that my meaning can be found in one (or several) of the following – my relationship with my family, my relationship with my friends, my relationship with my own body, my relationship with the divine, my relationship with society, and my relationship with nature. The fact that I’m viewing each in the terms of “my relationship with” is deliberate, because while I’m starting with the assumption that my meaning needs to be about ME, I know that it can’t be about me in a vacuum. I also know that if I’m going to find the answer, I’m going to need to challenge myself to approach these relationships differently – try new things, do some things more than I currently am, and spend a lot more time thinking about these experiences. If nothing more, maybe this blog can help me accomplish that.
The meaning of my life is something more than 42. What exactly, I’m not sure. But I’m going to try and find out.
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