Over the next three months, while I traveled through the open, wild places of Mexico, the Southwest, Colorado and Texas, the quiet ache in my chest became a roaring river of grief.
I had not cried in… ten years? Fifteen? Now each morning when I sat at the breakfast table, a tightness grew in my throat until the pressure rose into and out of my mouth and eyes and nose, tears running down my face into my oats, dotting my journal with ink blot paintings. What could be more saccharine that crying into your journal? If you really can’t do anything else–then it sacred. This may have been the first art I ever made without a hint of self-consciousness.
One of the hallmarks of deep grief, as opposed to everyday sadness, is that once it is opened by one door–a death, a disappointment, an illness, a divorce–one discovers a long line of griefs that were never given audience earlier in life. As these long-silent supplicants swept through every aspect of my life, from mundane habits to deeply held beliefs, I began to wonder if I had ever known what I wanted out of my life.
No time
For one thing, why did I find downtime so stressful? Momo, an uncannily prescient book by Michael Ende, tells the story of a town that becomes obsessed with saving time. It starts with efficient work, but soon “even leisure time had to be used to the full, so as to extract the maximum entertainment and relaxation with the minimum of delay.” I was a citizen of this town. When I was working, I longed to go faster so that I could, finally, be done. When I took a break, it was with gritted teeth; I had to make the time off worth it because every second wasted was lost ground. The pressure, in both states, was immense.
Once, after an all-day bikeride with friends on a Sunday evening, I lay on the floor of my apartment, completely exhausted, having given every ounce of energy to leisure. My wife came home and asked me, “How was it?” I replied, “I just wish I had time to relax.” She looked at me like I was insane–out all day doing what I wanted with my friends–what was I asking for?
No satisfaction
At the dining room table, I cried because I was insane. I had chosen over and over what would make me feel I had wrung everything from the ticking clock, the maximum life experience, but in the furor I had somehow missed the actual experience of my life. I had done the events, but missed the experiences, which are felt, not logged or counted. I had never learned to feel my own experiences, so I was incapable of knowing what was satisfying and what was not.
My strange, strained relationship to my own time and satisfaction made relationships, art, hobbies and service–anything that required patient presence without a clear, measurable outcome–inscrutable. My guilty downtime was either videogames, TV and Instagram or high intensity exercise–all of which made me forget what I was doing, offering relief from my own mind. In short, I sold my time to the highest bidder; whether the bid was paid in widgets produced or distraction from my widget quota, I had built my life around making widgets.
Now, despite having gained some financial security for the first time in my life–precisely the freedom I had sought with all that widget making–I had cultivated none of the skills to enjoy a widget-free life.
Oscar Wilde said, “There are two great tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.” Both involve grief, but the second tragedy comes with a big helping of desperation.
When I sold my company, I got the second kind. And I felt desperate.
new gods 