Recently, I’ve been reflecting on my decisions in life; when I went to college, what I chose to major in, all the early adult decisions that I am currently regretting. I highlight the ‘currently’ piece because from the long-view of life these decisions I made early on may not be so regrettable…
I also have this meta-shame around the fact that I regret my decisions. I’ve never been a partier or a risk taker, yet, it seems that the FOMO, YOLO, party-fuck-all ideals have seeped into my life. I am not supposed to have regrets… I’m supposed to be a bit reckless, supposed to go against the grain… right?
Yesterday, while walking along the muddy basin of the river with Cody, he commented on how “the path we were on felt like where our society was headed. We are being forced onto an artificial path that segregated us from nature and freedom.” I felt like his comment was both profound and nauseating because it didn’t feel like a metaphor for the future — it felt like the present and the past and the future all in one.
On one side of us was a chain link fence with barbed wire up top. No entry signs were posted every 15 feet and next to us the river visible but inaccessible due to concrete barriers like they use on the highway. The path we walked was muddy and fixed. A hundred footprints set ahead of us but no room to explore or engage with the park we had come to visit was available.
I regret my decisions right now to study a subject I wasn’t passionate about. I regret that I wasn’t a rigorous studier or got involved in internships or jobs that could help push my career. At the time, though, I had no idea what I wanted. All I knew was I didn’t want to get on the path. I didn’t want to have a career, I didn’t want to work hard, I was deeply depressed and unimpressed with life but was surrounded by parental and societal pressure to do the next step and go to college.
It made me so unhappy. I wish I had been given the time to explore, the time to find something that made me feel joyful or happy or impassioned. So I resisted entering any path even an off-beaten one because to me it wasn’t my own adventure. I wanted that uncertainty of life, yet was required to fixate on it. People told me you can do that at college. But I didn’t want to party. I wasn’t social and I really struggled in friendships and relationships.
In sessions with clients, the theme of struggling comes up a lot. Struggling with something, or against something or for something is an important part of preparation - in many ways it is ceremonial. When we begin the process of stepping into a leadership position, or a position in which we offer to provide for others we need to begin to step into various trials to prove our ability to carry out the task to others and to ourselves.
I’d posit the largest themes we engage with in this ceremonial struggle in America are: coming of age, going to college, getting married, starting a family… and even then the ceremonial processes in which we begin that work is surface level without legitimate mentorship in these areas. Additionally, these ceremonial rights of passage are not all encompassing of the human experience and the rights + rituals we need to move through.
When we by-pass that work or our legitimacy to take responsibility is cloudy or ill-gotten we get leadership like (as in not exact) Trump… What ceremonies did he go through that made him worthy of being president of the United States? Did he take responsibility as a reward for power or did he earn the responsibility to lead the country?
Yet, although I do believe in the importance of struggling to be ready for an important role and that we cannot just be given or take it without dire consequences to our societies — there are other sides to struggling that make the struggle unsafe.
For example, I am not qualified for most jobs that are available in my area. Most jobs are sales, marketing, engineering, medical or data based. They are jobs that promote and create the consumerist cycle for one company or another — so I also don’t identify with their mission. This means piecemealing together work and money opportunities to make ends meet. I chronically chose to remain outside the system, to not engage in the hypocrisy, lies, and soul-deadening life of the “path”. Thinking that it would lead to an easier and happier life.
As of right now, choosing an alternative lifestyle hasn’t made me happier. Perhaps I have watched too many skittles commercials… I have been expecting to “taste the rainbow,” but I haven’t found the gold at the end of the rainbow. I have no profound insights on this fact, but only wish to share with you the messy middle I am in, the real-time struggles as they are coming up, the emotions and meta-feelings that have bloomed from them.
Where are you in your messy middle? What about taking “the path” or resisting it have you gained? What, if anything, do you currently regret?