Opening Post
I believe the principal struggle of my life hasn’t been any emotional state, but the perceived need to improve it.
In 2018, I experienced a challenging feeling. Even today, I don’t have a word for it. When I first experienced mania, I didn’t have a word for that either. Despite mania being an emotional issue, my first attempt to fix it was to have my heart examined. I didn’t understand the nature of the problem until someone gave me the word mania.
Although I knew the feeling from 2018 was emotional, I still didn’t understand it’s cause. I didn’t always experience the feeling, but when it came, I was stuck in a pain I didn’t know how to fix.
If the feeling set in at night, I tried to fall asleep as soon as possible. I lied in bed and pressured myself to fall asleep, because I believed each second I remained awake would be another second I couldn’t bear. One night, I was an hour away from home, and to get back I needed a ride. The feeling set in, and I panicked as I realized I would experience it for an hour before I could sleep.
Since I wasn’t driving, I believed I had no control of my situation, and I stopped trying to feel better. When I did this, the feeling didn’t go away, but there was a calmness. If the feeling was pain, the attempt to fix it was suffering.
My current understanding of gratitude comes from the poem To A Mouse by Robert Burns, specifically it’s use of the phrase, “promised joy”. Reading this poem helped me realize there’s no such thing as promised joy. At first, this realization shaped my relationship with the future and expectations. Then, I said if the moment I’m in is yesterday’s future, then there’s nothing in it that was promised to me. I realized gratitude is about being aware of these unpromised joys as they happen.
In my experience, no matter how challenging a moment is, it contains an unpromised joy. I first saw this in music, as no song was promised to me. As I continued to look, I found more things to be grateful for. A turning point was when I realized an individual breath is an unpromised joy.
If I say enjoying life is being grateful for a moment as I’m in it, unpromised joys are something I can be grateful for as they happen, and a breath is an unpromised joy, I can believe the following:
∞
The first night after turning in my two weeks’ notice, I dreamed I got cancer. The next night, I dreamed I was in a car wreck. In both dreams, I woke up concerned about the monetary cost. When conscious, I believe there are bigger threats to my welfare than finances in both dreams. Since I’ve never worried about these threats, I believe my stress was about not knowing if I could enjoy life if I lost financial security.
Later that week, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I went to a 24-hour restaurant. The waiter and I had a conversation where he told me he was a successful college student, but dropped out to pursue a career in music. Despite him not fulfilling his dream, I believed he was someone living in the moment. Even if this perception was wrong, I realized I will always be able to practice gratitude. I developed a new belief.
∞
When I asked myself why I enjoyed one conversation but not the other, I recognized it wasn’t how properly I spoke. I told the phlebotomist a joke that was potentially upsetting, and I was conservative with my coworker. I realized I enjoyed the conversation with the phlebotomist because I spoke the way I wanted to. I didn’t do this with my coworker. In retrospect, I believe this is because I was trying to control an outcome.
The outcome wasn’t whether I’d talk to my coworker again. I know it’s unlikely I’ll speak to the phlebotomist again, and I didn’t try to fix that. The outcome I was trying to force was avoiding the predicted pain of losing a friendship. Without realizing, I told myself if I protected the friendship I would be happy, which is trying to create a promised joy.
I said my principal struggle has been the perceived need to improve an emotional state. Today, I believe this is perpetually sacrificing a moment I could enjoy for a future that can’t be guaranteed. Now, I try to remind myself of three beliefs.
As long as I’m breathing, I can breathe.
I just have to breathe.
“The cops explain that the lady is not catatonic in the strict sense of catatonic but rather a ‘D.P.,” which is mental-health-facility slang for Debilitatingly Phobic. Her deal is apparently that she’s almost psychotically terrified of the possibility that she might be either blind or paralyzed or both. So e.g. she keeps her eyes shut tight 24/7/365 out of the reasoning that as long as she keeps her eyes shut tight she can find hope in the possibility that if she was to open them she’d be able to see, they say;”
Parts of my childhood were an unconscious attempt at building a college resume. The extracurriculars and AP classes I did despite not liking them are clear examples, but something more subtle was studying for the ACT by learning how the test works, not by improving my knowledge of the subjects.
I was accepted into a highly ranked engineering program and continued to do well in classes. I applied to internships and worked three rotations with the same company. I then worked for that company when I graduated.
At that job I worked hard and was recognized for it. An advertised feature of the company I worked for was the ability to make significant career changes. Despite that, I chose to stay with the career path I hired into through the seven years I was there.
The word I would use to describe the first 29 years of my life is success. By any measurable value, I met or exceeded my goals. Despite this, I wasn’t happy. Over the last two years of my career, I experienced significant stress at work and eventually had to take a medical leave because I developed stress-induced insomnia.
After deciding to quit, I knew I needed to take a step back. My life had steadily improved in the months leading up to me quitting, and a major part of that was writing. I decided to pursue writing as a passion.
Within the first week without official employment, I found myself scared of trying to write and considered looking for jobs. I knew this was partially based in a perceived lack of financial security, but I also knew there was something emotional.
I began this essay with a quote from the novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace about a woman who was so afraid she was blind she wouldn’t open her eyes. At first, I read this and thought by never opening her eyes she’s making herself blind, which is exactly what she’s afraid of.
Reading this passage helped me realize why I was drawn to trying to find another job. I’m scared of writing for the same reason the fictional woman wouldn’t open her eyes. If I never tried to write, then I would always know there’s a possibility I could succeed at it.
When I look back on the decisions I made, I see many were to increase my likelihood of success. I took AP classes because they made it more likely for me to get into a good college, I signed up for all my internships with the same company because I knew it made it more likely for me to get a job, and I stayed on the same career path all seven years within that company because I knew I was good at it.
Writing is the first thing I’ve attempted I have no confidence I’ll succeed at, and I believe that’s why I want to apply for jobs in an industry that was part of me being unhappy. I liked the work I did because people thought I was good at it. I’m willing to never try writing because failing at it would be public, and I don’t want to go through that.
The fear of failure is only one part of my understanding of the quote from Infinite Jest. I said the woman is making herself blind by refusing to open her eyes, but that’s only true if she can see. It’s odd to talk about the reality of a fictional world, but technically there’s a chance she can’t see. In this case, she’s denying herself the opportunity to accept she’s blind and live the best life possible given the circumstances.
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