We are thrust into this life with no choice or warning, emerging as a vulnerable, altricial nugget immediately subject to the happenstances and vicissitudes that daily befall us. There is no customized guidebook, no annotated manual, no detailed map, merely the examples of our parents, teachers, leaders, friends, siblings, and other role models, positive and negative.
We grow, we learn, we fail, we learn from failing, we fail to learn, and so on and so forth. Painfully slowly and then suddenly all at once we are considered adults, persons less insulated from the consequences of our flaws, humans possessing seemingly limitless possibilities that become confoundingly more limited as we work through the decision tree of life.
In the rush through adolescence and young adulthood and marriage and young parenthood, a couple of decades that pass as minutes, there was surely some loosely sketched plan, the setting of specific intentions, the making of reasoned choices, the simulacrum of an ordered existence. While I have vague recollections of such ambitions, in retrospect it feels more like sanguine chaos.
Arriving at this epoch of my life required dedication, luck, risk, and love, both its provision and receipt. Guidance was at the ready, although not readily accepted, me being inexorably keen to find out the hard way whether I was right or wrong or whether that distinction even matters. And now I have attained the age where most of my major decisions have been made, where my focus is less on achievement and more on peace and happiness.
This should be the simple part, but with a nod to recency bias, this has been the hardest period of my life. As it turns out, it is far easier to get into apex schools, land a fulfilling job, found a law firm, create and raise a daughter than it is to just be satisfied, to be instead of do, to rest instead of run. I am not accustomed to this relatively fallow period and I am having trouble coping.
My parents taught me humility and kindness, gave me a moral grounding, were aspirational in their relationship. My mentors reinforced my sense of responsibility to the world, nurtured my desire for service. My peers challenged me intellectually, showed me how to have perhaps too much fun. But none of these critical figures in my rearing can do what is my work alone – finding contentment.
For forty-four years, I have eschewed the platitudes of common wisdom, have found no solace in religion, have purposefully ignored the litany of self-help tomes, choosing instead to attune myself to a select few exemplars, to listen to the instincts that burgeoned inside of me, to tread my own path. I have never wanted to be told what to do or think, have an issue with authority, real and perceived.
Pushing inexorably forward, formulating my worldview from lived experience and the insights gleaned from my rapacious digestion of literature, it is easy to now take a step back and recognize that this strategy may miss some useful inputs. For example, while I have tried to internalize the lessons imparted by my sagacious romantic partners, I am quite sure I could have done a better job listening to their suggestions, accepting their advice.
Geared so fully into the mode of helping others, relying on my reserves of individual strength, I am proud of the support I have provided, of the life that I have built. Attention now needs to be directed inward, letting go of old habits, clearing out what does not serve the next chapter of my life, opening myself up to assistance and not trying to figure everything out myself.
Perhaps all that I need is the illusion of my self-sufficiency, a bolster of self-worth even as I admit that I need more than just my own corpus and mind to make it through this wild world. Distrustful though I am of any author or speaker or podcaster professing to know the secrets to happiness, this skepticism can mellow, allow me to absorb and adopt those tenets that work for me. I can use some self-help to help myself.