What are you afraid of? Do you know what keeps you up at night? Do you know why it keeps you up, or do you prefer not to think about it?
I know life can be a terrifying bore. It’s never much fun to think about what might happen to your budget if you run out of money when bills are due, or to your child’s future if they fail a class. The older you get, the more it seems that dreary thoughts creep in from the periphery, no matter how fast you try to outpace them.
All of us ignore those thoughts to some degree or another. We’ll drink or distract ourselves on a Saturday to get a bit of fleeting happiness, just to have a memory we can hold in a back pocket through the coming week that reminds us there’s probably something to look forward to on the next weekend. We’ll scroll through social media feeds and look at all the happy people, while saving up our own best moments so they can be judiciously distributed onto our favorite platforms over time. We collect memories, hoarding them in a bag so they can be drawn from later, like an IV line delivering the hope and validation we crave over a stretched out period, adding to the collective delusion that the purpose of life is making the most of one yearly week spent on a beach.
Why? What do we do it for? What’s so effective about avoiding our own unhappiness that we think doing so will make it go away?
I suspect most of us don’t realize we’re unhappy, or if we did we’d realize it and then do something. Unless of course we didn’t believe there were anything to be done. In that case, you or I would probably do nothing of substance and continue on in a miserable existence, longing for the day when luck might change. But we both have lived long enough to realize luck doesn’t turn on a dime. Tomorrow will come and go, just like today did.
There’s always the promise of life after death I suppose. Paradise waiting for the righteous, assuming you believe in such things. Must you really wait for paradise to be happy though? Is there truly nothing to be done as long as you’re alive? Is there no insight that could unblock the dam holding back happiness, wherever it is?
I think there might be, but I don’t think that finding happiness can be happily done. I’m going to tell you a story about insight, and that insight might eventually lead to happiness. But the story itself is far from the destination.
This is a story about losing faith, contemplating death, then living through divorce, financial collapse, and unrequited love. Why? Well, simply put, I don’t know anyone who ever gained much insight from perpetual rainbows and sunshine.
Have you?
Yes, I’m divorced. Four months after my divorce was finalized, I found myself accidentally wandering through the streets of Uppsala, Sweden. It was early May, and the warmth and light of Swedish spring had just begun to pull the town’s residents out of winter hibernation. They lazily filled the benches along the river walkway and the outdoor café tables of Sweden’s oldest university town.
I had meant to be in Stockholm, just a forty minute train ride south. And in fact, I had been just two days earlier, trying to extend my stay with any open bed at any hostel in the city. Due to a Beyoncé concert having attracted enough attendees to consume the entire city’s inventory of budget accommodations, that bed was not to be found. As one does when faced with such unforeseen events, I solved this predicament by relocating my remote work operation to Uppsala. I had been told that Uppsala, while quaint, was a boring place and not worth the time to visit unless you had a very good reason.
Wandering past bicycles lining narrow cobblestone streets, I happened across a coffee shop that seemed as good a place as any to post up for the day. The inside had a fresh, Scandinavian ambiance created by a shameless abundance of IKEA furniture. I ordered a cappuccino, found a power outlet, and began to work.
Within a couple hours I needed to use the restroom. I knew there was likely to be a restroom for customer use - not always a given in Europe - because I had seen other customers going to and from an area of the café that seemed unlikely to be anything else. I asked a couple at the table next to mine to keep an eye on my belongings, stood up, and went to inspect.
Upon arriving I saw a door that, from the signage, purported to indeed be a restroom for customer use. After turning the handle and feeling the latch give way, I pulled. The door only moved perhaps half an inch before refusing to budge any further. Confused, I looked down at the door’s handle and saw that the latch had indeed cleared it’s seat in the wall. Nothing else appeared to prevent the door from opening. Assuming the door had simply gotten stuck on the door frame, I pulled another time. Once again the door would not budge. Baffled, I looked around for another restroom, certain that if this door were somehow jammed or broken that there must be another. But in front of me there was only the single door.
Frustrated at the thought that I might have to pack up my temporary work station and leave the café in search of a restroom, I took a few steps back but hesitated for a moment before returning to my seat.
In that moment of hesitation the door opened. What I found on the other side changed my life.
About ten months prior to sitting in the Swedish café I was in the West American state of Utah, staring at the coffee machine on the second floor of my co-working space. Until leaving the company that occupied one of the suites, it had also been the building that Selena, my wife of nearly six years, worked in. As a self-employed extrovert looking for ways to escape my home office, I continued working there after she moved on to other opportunities.