Vision Quest
I often find myself feeling at a loss. Not
lost. At a loss. Sort of at a loose end. Like there’s something I should be
doing right now, but I have no idea what it is.
I feel aimless, drifting. It’s a strange
feeling – and one that, counter intuitively, sees me reacting to it by not
doing anything. When I feel like this, even though I have plenty of work to be
going on with, I can’t seem to motivate myself to do any of it. This feeling of
listlessness has plagued me for years. Sometimes, if I’m not careful, it gets
worse and starts to drag me into a solid funk. Then I can spend weeks being
completely ineffectual and hating myself for it.
My current Zen kick is helping with this a
little bit. It’s giving me some techniques for coping with it before I start to
feel like I’m completely adrift. I can see what I’m feeling – face it head on,
remind myself that I don’t actually have or need an aim in life, I just need to
focus on what I’m doing right now. Then I can do something simple and useful,
like the dishes, and try to be fully in the moment. It’s not getting to the
root of the problem, but at least it’s helping to mitigate the symptoms.
From a Buddhist perspective, it’s coming
back to wanting and grasping – I feel lost because I want some form of
direction and purpose that I don’t have. That, to be honest, I’ve never had.
This wanting and grasping is the cause of this particular suffering, and I can
try to pull myself out of it by focusing on what I have and being satisfied with
that.
At least, that’s the idea.
In practice, this is something that comes
back over and over again. It’s kind of like the symptoms of an undiagnosed food
intolerance. I don’t know what I’m eating that triggers it, so I keep on
triggering it.
As I was doing the dishes the other night
after a bout of listlessness and trying to focus on the here-and-now, it
occurred to me that I might need a Spirit Quest. The Ojibway believed that all
men needed to go on a Spirit Quest to find their purpose in life. Women could
go on one if they wanted to, but if they had children they didn’t need a Spirit
Quest as they already had a purpose – keeping the next generation alive and
helping them become useful members of society.
I do sometimes wonder if I’d feel less at a
loose end if I wasn’t a childless spinster. Although I’ve never wanted to get married and have children, part of
me really wouldn’t mind skipping to the bit where I’ve been married for 15
years and have six kids to take care of. I feel as if I should be taking care
of someone other than myself – contributing something to the future
generations. Something like, maybe, future generations.
And yet, at the same time, the whole
finding-someone-settling-down-and-popping-out-babies thing just really isn’t
me. I’m not the marrying or childbearing kind. If I was, I would have done
something about my childless spinsterhood long ago. So, perhaps I need a Spirit
Quest to find out what my purpose is, since I didn’t opt for the ready-made
variety.
Or maybe I need to stop thinking I have a
purpose in life beyond living. Is life a journey or a dance? The latter doesn’t
have to go anywhere. If I can just accept that, I might feel less at a loss.
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