Epiphanies; or, realizations from a weeklong retreat
Friday, February 20: I'm at my best friend's home to play board games with her and two other friends. Afterwards, we listen to music and chat about life, staying up well past midnight. I stay over and we have morning coffee, which extends our conversation about life and what worries us. I express the emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges I've been experiencing, a great deal of which stems from difficult life circumstances in my own home. She invites me to stay over at her place for one week so I can have that time and space to myself to figure things out. I accept, and go back to my place and pack my bags that night. From February 21 to the morning of March 1, I more or less had a retreat from my everyday life. Utimately, I was not productive, but the change in environment—along with ongoing conversations with my friend throughout the week—led me to several realizations about life. I share them here.
First: I'm way too hard on myself. I exist between two extremes; one is doing nothing (perfectionism-induced procrastination) and the other is striving to be a machine (idealized, optimized automation). The former produces terrible guilt and the latter an immense exhaustion. The friction between these two feelings results in inefficiency and ineffectiveness. My mind is rarely in the moment, for it either dwells on the past or is concerned with the future. My recent focus on meditation and journaling is helping me see the need for a middle path: it exists if I can take the calm I feel when I'm doing nothing and combine it with the energy I feel when I am determined. This balance exists if I can stop telling myself the lie that I can be in a state of constant focus. Rest is important; doing nothing is an entirely appropriate thing to do. It's important to establish a disciplined approach to work—as much as it is to create a disciplined regard for rest.
Second: between work and rest is also a need for play. I haven't allowed myself to enjoy things in a while, but during my week retreat, I watched 1-2 films almost nightly; started watching season 4 of Critical Role; and played board games. Somewhere during in the previous months, I told myself I wasn't allowed to have fun because of the tasks that life has placed before me. I was reminded that I have a choice, to pursue for or to deprive from myself joy. In tandem with the first realization, I want to learn how to give each aspect of life—work, play, rest—its due. I have a right to each, despite capitalism's preoccupation with work alone. When I rest, I want to be resting. When I play, I want to be playing. When I work, I want to be working. Confusing my intentions throughout the day is what makes each activity feel lacking. I want to be excellent in all three, and this requires focusing on one thing at a time—without the guilt.
Third: one's environment is crucial. For the last 21 months, I haven't had structure, an external framework that guides my time. I'm the sort of person who wanders and meanders when no structure exists. What ends up happening is what I desire to speed up time (to get to the good) and simultaneously desire to slow down or freeze time (to avoid the unpleasant). My relationship with time is unhealthy and unrealistic, for I'm not receiving time as it is. This is made worse by my habits in doomscrolling, fixating on news/drama/gossip. These are the things I could be avoiding entirely but I waste time on them! Revenge bedtime procrastination is a terrible form of self-harm. Moreover, I realized I unrealistically expect having "the perfect conditions" before doing something. I don't know where this expectation comes from—it's awful, wasting time in wait for ideal circumstances. I'm not living as much as I am drifting. In short: I'm learning that instead of changing aspects of myself, I should pay attention to my environment and identify the aspects that obstruct me.
Fourth: I think I'm destined to be alone. Now approaching my mid-30s, I've grown accustomed to being a bachelor, and I'm starting to think I'll be happier this way in the long run. This realization surfaced for a few reasons. First, hearing from my friend about her experiences with relationships, I now see that many relationships are not what they seem. For me, the costs (of compromising, communicating, emotional labour, etc.) exceed the benefits (a sense of companionship, etc.). Second, living as and with an impromptu roommate over the course of a week—with my best friend of all people—was not 100% fun. Accounting for another person in matters like what to eat, putting in effort and feeling flashes of resentment when effort isn't returned, having to adjust my schedule to correspond with another's (e.g., for grocery shopping)... these are things I didn't learn when I was younger and now I find it simpler to just focus on myself and avoid the hassle entirely. Isn't that funny? Growing up, I would feel sad or insecure that others seemed to have better success with relationships, and I've learned that such success depends on making compromises that I've learned to detest. I think I can be a good friend to many people, but the idea of being a good roommate or romantic partner now feels elusive. (And I extrapolate this experience with my best friend to the realm of romance because I always figured who I end up with should be my best friend. If this case presented so much resistance in me, then my patience for anyone less than a close friend would be commensurate in degree.) This is oddly liberating: so much of what preoccupied my past thinking and doing was based on wanting to attract a potential partner; without that as a goal now means my motivations require revision—into something more congruent with my true, independent, self.
Fifth: related to the previous realization, it also occurred to me that many of the goals I have these days are... not my own. They're the aspirations that my mentors and role models have for me. It's flattering, because they can detect my potential (even when I cannot) and they offer the encouragement that I didn't much have growing up. But that's the trap, right? If I'm not careful, then I end up always in pursuit of goals and milestones set for me by others. It may well be a boon that I discover this at my age, instead of at 40 or 50 or 60. Let me be specific: see, I'm in academia and the arena is competitive for scholars. Doing things so that I have a shot at a faculty position has kept me busy for the last couple years. Publishing articles, presenting at conferences, teaching classes, providing service: I can say I've worked on each. I'm good at them, but I don't quite enjoy them. I recently got a manuscript accepted, and the ratio of work put into it versus the excitement I got it from getting accepted is terribly skewed! If I'm being honest, I don't think academia is the path that will sustain me. (And with the proliferation of AI and the slashing of funding for post-secondary education and the ongoing attacks on academic freedom and free speech on campus... why should I disrupt my peace for all that?) This realization offers some liberty. In realizing that my goals are not truly my own, much stress has been alleviated. I don't feel compelled to compare myself based on progress on some well-tread path. Instead, I'm invited to chart my own path: the one that only I can take. That's much more exciting to me. In other words, by relegating academia to a side quest rather than the questline of the main campaign, I can stop fretting about. My true dream, my mission is to [redacted]. It's a dream that's over 15 years old; and perhaps I needed the diversion to recognize what it means to me, to better appreciate it.
Sixth: I have high standards. I've received feedback from several people (including close friends throughout my life and my current best friend) that these standards can be simultaneously admirable and frustrating. What I've deduced is that I can keep the standards I have for myself, but must learn to let go of applying them to the people around me. I've lost friendships in the past because I held unfair expectations for them. And so this balancing act of wanting better for myself, while letting others pursue their own definitions of better, is something I want to work on.
I've shared some epiphanies that are personal to me. They are not universal claims; I don't share them to make generalizable statements about how to live life. As I said to my friend, my attempts to figure out my life are not for writing a self-help book: the only life I want to have authority over is my own.