Asklemmy

A scholar would point out that I’m really just flippantly paraphrasing like, the entirety of stoic philosophical thought so the first thing I should say here is read some Epictetus and some Aurelius because those texts will pad out the space we are discussing here in a very comprehensive fashion.

With that said let me try to flesh out my OP a little.

I’m going to give you some examples from my own life and I’m using “we” and “our” here in a personal sense, drawing from my own circumstances and experiences. These utterances are subjective ones - please don’t read this the proclamation of some universal truth, YMMV.

I grew up subject to some challenging circumstances that led me to a deep need for self sufficiency. I had to believe that I could do anything I set my mind to because the alternative was a horrific life that I did not want to fall into at any cost.

In my twenties and thirties I made several huge efforts over several years to improve my circumstances. I met a woman, she already had a small child and so the urgency to make a success of my life increased further as I became responsible for a small family.

I pushed myself harder.

Believing that all I needed was to keep working at making sure everything was in its perfect place. I was a savage. If you crossed my path at work and I decided you were not an asset I would destroy you. If you competed with me professionally I would work day and night, forsaking everything else to beat you.

I lost myself in “succeeding” despite which that monkey on my back from my childhood never left me. Homelessness, abject poverty and having no value in the world was just one lazy day away for me. Even when I became objectively wealthy, started several businesses and had all of the outwardly visible trappings of success, inside I was still the same teenage kid, lost in the world with nowhere to go and deeplY, deeply afraid.

My forties rolled around and I became increasingly aware that something wasn’t right. I’d look at my family, my home, my work and everything seemed to be in its perfect place. I’d run out of things to “fix” and I was lost, just deeply unhappy and I couldn’t figure out why everything I had done had led to this feeling of emptiness. Why I was still running from nothing for a decade or more?

Over time and with the help of my wife I began to see that I was on a path to destruction. A long, winding one that disguised itself as so many things but a path to destruction none the less.

She would say to me: “I can’t bear to see you so unhappy, I can’t understand why you are sad and I’m scared that you’ll do something awful if things stay like this.”

Slowly I began to realise I needed help so I went to my GP and told them what was happening. They referred me to a psychologist and this was a real stroke of luck for me because the woman they referred to me to, we just hit it off instantly. If you’re reading this and considering therapy then just know that it can take a while to for the right person but I was incredibly lucky to find this person immediately.

It took over a year of therapy for me to arrive at a place where I could allow myself to be and not always do.

We grow up in a patriarchal society that rewards and values aggression at the cost of inner peace and I had taken that belief system down hook, line and sinker. That internalised Hunger Games world I was living in was destroying me slowly, one closed deal, one Mercedes Benz, one Rolex at a time and I was trapped because every signal I received from friends, family, the media, from society at large was that what I was doing was right, was righteous and I was “succeeding”.

It took a year of therapy and a lot of personal growth to start coming round to the understanding that I was mistaken about the nature of things. That being good at being, just being, is more important than doing. Took me a long time to be able to get off the gas and just enjoy the view out the window a little bit.

When I learned to just be I learned to find the good in things. Not simply to take everything apart trying to find the bad thing I had to fix, and that changed me fundamentally as a person.

I’m now see myself as a participant in the world. The good things and the bad things. I’m no longer the person at the wheel, ultimately responsible for everything in a finite human life that is guaranteed only of ultimate obliteration.

Learning to integrate to my life and not just struggle in futility to control every aspect of it has made me a better version of myself. More loving, more able to see goodness. More peaceful inside and less prone to anger. Easier on myself and others too as a result, and now when my wife or one of our children smile or laugh I’m right there watching it, experiencing it and feeling that for once I am in my perfect place and not just everything around me.