I like to think that the past few years has been an enforced existential crisis of sorts. Maybe that is just my lens though. I think I do spend an unusually large amount of my time reflecting on whether things are important, meaningful or relevant to the world.
But there is an unquestionable sense of unease that people convey and communicate. While there have been th expected challenges of isolation or loneliness, I believe that has been a more powerful questioning of "What do I actually DO with my days?"
I have read first hand reports of professional men, never used to being at home after 7:30am or before 7:00pm, suddenly realising the magic of seeing your 12 month old child covered from head to toe in dinner - or the baffling, all consuming energy required to just keep small children alive and well. They are so small...how hard can it be?
Realising what we have missed can gnaw away at a sense of priorities. I have a hand written note attached to the wall on my right. Penned on a plane from Melbourne to Brisbane in my "big consulting firm days". It almost breaks my heart to read the pained longing to be at home with my children and not be on a plane flying AWAY from them....again. The note was exactly 12 months before I packed it in and went out on my own so I could chart my own course and not be told when to say goodbye to my crying children once again.
There was a terrible tragedy the other day in Victoria - a helicopter crash that killed all passengers. On top of the sadness was the horrible backstory that one of the men on board was a life long high achiever, hard working, constant travelling professional. After much internal wrangling he had finally decided to stop and spend more time with the family he feels he had always overlooked. One last trip. One last time THEN he would stop.
Without some sort of external pressure we frail humans often proceed along narrow paths that we struggle to extract ourselves from. We follow the illuminated path in front of us, with the uncertainty and fear of change on either side. If the desire to change never exceeds the weight of the fear then we will stay. Unless.....we are pushed.
Pushed by a global pandemic, isolation, working from home, not commuting, wondering what we do and what we actually achieve with our limited time on the planet.
So there we were as an entire collective facing into the hardest of existential questions. Its no wonder we feel a sense of unease and upheaval.
But we are slowly returning to "normal". With this return brings a sweet relief from the logical uncertainty and hardship of enforced isolations and lock downs. It also brings a relief from the existential questions of what we do, who we are, how we spend our time. The relief from this element is a false refuge. This is not a genuine relief but a false relief. Because the relief is from an essential question that is difficult to answer.
As the poet David Whyte says - these are questions that "have no right to go away".
The question has no right to go away.
The question of what is important has no right to go away.
It must be answered.
My concern is that the race back to "normal" means that all the questions that the global pandemic raised are just wrapped back up in the oilcloth and quietly placed back into the drawer for us to face into some time later. We will get to it when we have time. We promise ourselves that we will pull them back out next weekend - or the weekend after - or the one after that. Once I have more time. Once I get things under control. Once the next hurdle is crossed. Once things settle down again. Once....
But these questions don't go away. They find their way out until we finally face into the hard work of answering them. Or never answering them fully but at least having a crack and in the effort and sweat of looking - we find we have made one more forward step away from the path we were on but never truly loved.
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