The Mid-Life Crisis of a Millennial

Not my van, but a lot of good moments of presence were had along those shores!

I Think, Therefore I Suffer

Friends, I am so sick and tired of thinking. I’ve become increasingly aware of the incessant voice in my head that is my mind. I’ve spent my life trying to follow its advice and goals in the pursuit of our collective happiness and fulfillment, and then it just whines like an asshole for another new thing when it gets what it supposedly wanted.

For better and for worse — definitely for worse these days — I am very much a thinker. Unsurprisingly, I’ve always valued my mental capacities and held them in high regard. Growing up, I was never an athletic kid partially on purpose, so I figured being smart and retreating to the realm of the mind was the key to success. This idea didn’t just come to me, of course. Society and culture were very clear that intelligence was to be lauded, and intelligent people always succeed when they tried hard enough.

I internalized that shit deeply. This message that society built into me then gave rise to a constant focus on bettering my future. I always told myself that if I can just achieve this next thing, I’ll be happy. Then each time after I achieve a goal, I tell myself that the other next thing will finally bring me happiness. But when does this happiness come? With this relentless focus on achieving the next goal, my mind and I have conditioned ourselves to never truly be fulfilled.

Thinking isn’t always bad, of course. But my problem seems to come from the fact that the thinking that I’ve perfected so well is also creating some absurd expectations about life. In fact, I’ve always had really high expectations of myself and of the world around me. The hitch, though, is that when these expectations don’t get met, I get sad and frustrated. But, fuck if some of these expectations aren’t stupid.

Speaking of stupid, my life is already pretty incredible on paper: I have a successful career, I’m doing fairly well financially, I’m a digital nomad, I successfully escaped winter, I have a loving family and great friends, I feel a deep kinship with the world around me. Despite all this, though, it’s apparently not enough for my mind. It always wants more. It wants something different. There’s always something just a bit off in my life. Whatever I have now — whenever that now is — it’s never enough. When does it stop? Does it ever stop?

This just might be my version of a millennial mid-life crisis.

A Head Full of Buddhism

This all sounds terribly Buddhist, of course, and that’s partially because it is. While I had been having these thoughts for a while, Wild Mind, Wild Earth by David Hinton has really helped me to crystalize a lot of this and add clarity around it. I’ve always felt a pull towards Buddhism, but it can easily unleash my inner nihilist. It certainly did a decade ago, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Because of that, I’ve pretty much avoided most things Buddhist for years and instead chose to focus on magic and the occult. Conveniently, David Hinton did a good job building on the animist lens that I’ve come to understand the world through, and it’s allowed me to see some Buddhist and Taoist ideas in a refreshing way.

I am absolutely not an expert on Buddhism, but a lot of what I’ve been exposed to has done kind of a shit job contextualizing things. I’d argue that a lot of “Western” Buddhism doesn’t properly acknowledge our often very analytical and disembodied experiences. Or if it does acknowledge it, it’s done in a very surface-oriented way that just ends up reinforcing the unconscious baggage a lot of us carry around.

In the West, Buddhism has been layered on top of an already-fractured framework. It’s is often portrayed as a tool to transcend this illusory world — much like our cultural stories around the need to escape this life in order to get into heaven. Much of the Buddhism I read about never involved being an active, joyful participant with the world around me. Then again, maybe it did feature that as a concept, and I just wasn’t ready for it at the time! Instead, I saw it as learning to control my mind to disconnect myself from the world’s attachments in order to move beyond suffering. Wild Mind, Wild Earth reframed this, and it seems to have prevented my inner nihilist from going scorched earth this time.

Beyond David Hinton, other Buddhist practitioners have recognized this challenge of disembodiment for Western practitioners, as well. Reggie Ray in his 2006 article, Touching Enlightenment, addressed this directly. He even points out how the typical method we’re taught for meditation — bringing awareness to the breath at the point of the nose or mouth — merely reinforces the our cultural assumption that the head is where our attention should always be. This can be bad news for people — like me! — who are excessively head and mind-focused. Instead, we should be looking for ways to tune into the rest of the body in order to learn its wisdom. This can help us remember that we’re not separate from the world around us.

Deeply Tuning In

I nearly finished this blog post about a month ago, but I didn’t pull the trigger on publishing it since the frustration was just too strong. I’m glad I sat on it for a bit, as doing so allowed space for some different thoughts and concepts to find their way into my life. I’ve softened on things, and I’ve been able to put a lot of helpful stuff into practice.

For over three years now, I’ve gone on a walk every Sunday just as night falls to pray the rosary. When I got to Florida in December, it started to feel a bit performative again, and so I began to use the ritual as a way to get out of my head and notice the world around me. The wind in palm trees and the shallow waves of Tampa Bay helped out with this quite nicely. About a month ago, I started adding a request before starting my rosary: I now ask Mary to open my heart up to the wonder of the world around me.

This has reinforced the animist mindset I’ve been trying to cultivate for years, and Mary is certainly doing what she can to move this awareness along. The night I started this new intention, I watched a fat possum cross the street and saw as a hilariously-adorable dog hang out of a window of a car as it drove past me. The night was cool and felt almost fall-like, and the sounds of the breeze welcomed me in. Wind chimes! My god, I love wind chimes. I also wandered around Old Southeast taking pictures of colors and shadows that caught my eye.

The one thing that Western Buddhism does get right is its focus on presence, and I’ve been doing what I can to cultivate that more. At this point in my life, I don’t want anything to do. I just want to be. And we have access to that state of existence all the time. We just have to be aware of it. I could stand to just sit back more often in order to give it some additional space. This is of course easier said than done since my life is filled with distractions. Every second of every day is filled with content and so much shit to do.

As part of writing this out, I revisited some old writings from a decade ago when things in my life we not so awesome. At the time, I committed myself to the idea of a career. This was only because there was no animist monastery in the woods that I could join in order to easily divest myself from our shitty systems. I didn’t have language for it at the time, but I needed a monastery that wasn’t so mind-and-head-focused like the Catholic and some Western Buddhist versions.

After thinking about this for a bit, a very strong part of me jumped up and down and said “Hey! We should start our own animist monastery!” But that would just keep me entangled in the never-ending trap of accomplishments and achievements. Now that I’m better aware of my mind’s tendencies, I can recognize that voice a little easier. I’ve been able to stop myself from creating a spreadsheet of expenses and potential revenue sources for such a massive project, thank fuck. While all of that is certainly tempting, my newfound perspective has me listening to blue jays and marveling at clouds instead. Arguably, a much more radical way for me to spend my time. Plus, it just might help me come to better terms with my unfolding mid-life crisis.