Dispatch #06: On being in the middle

Sometimes I feel like I’d like to skip to the part in my life where everything makes sense. I’m referring to a place where all the reasons behind the different choices that you make, all the lessons you need to learn, all those different experiences have accrued their true value and meaning. I want to be at that point where I’ve earned the sense of clarity of who I’m meant to be and what all this fluff and noise means to my life - whether it means anything at all. 

I know that what I’m asking for is basically a sneak peek at the final page of a book. A book I’m hoping contains personal fulfilment, finding my purpose and a lasting love.I know it’s in part due to an unnerved feeling that I need to have some semblance of reassurance — there’s some happy ending coming my way. I flow quite fluidly between self-assuredness and worrying about life’s absurdism. I reference absurdism in the philosophical sense — our tendency to try and find meaning in life and our inability to find it with certainty.  

“But we are curious about the result, just as we are curious about the way a book turns out. We do not want to know anything about the anxiety, the distress, the paradox. We carry on an esthetic flirtation with the result. It arrives just as unexpectedly but also just as effortlessly as a prize in a lottery, and when we have heard the result, we have built ourselves up.” ― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

I think what Kierkegaard rightfully pinpoints is the ‘fear and trembling’ we experience as we attempt to anticipate the unknown outcome of our situations. The outcome itself usually arrives quietly, just slipping past you unnoticed. Or, if it has a more definitive entrance it is definitely then anticlimactic but through our ‘esthetic flirtation with the result’, the ‘distress’ or ‘drama’ we wanted to avoid has paradoxically occurred. We damage ourselves worrying about what the answer might be, the infinite outcomes influenced by an infinite number of factors. 

In some ways, our trajectory is set and what we can control is mostly how we influence the quality of the outcome through the effort we put into our actions. So all the worry and anxiety only does one thing  — diminish your ability to be thoughtful, intentional, focused and driven. Without