An Existential Crisis, and The Meaning That Followed

Yesterday, I had a moment of existential crisis.  Do you know these moments?   The ones where something you are doing (say, entering figures in a spreadsheet) seems suddenly pointless, and then you realize if *that* is pointless, the larger thing it supports is also pointless, and so on and so on, until you come to the conclusion that everything is meaningless.

I've been working long days this week - partially due to some long hours, but once due to a late start in the morning and once due to an epic and, really, almost traumatic traffic episode on Wed.  Did any other locals get caught in the 580 / San Rafael Bridge fiasco?  (It was shut down for hours due to a police standoff with a disturbed person that had shut himself up in a hotel for weeks, and, that morning, had fired a shot across a portion of the freeway.) 

Beside the incident being inherently sad - it's sad our society doesn't have anything between a cop and a social worker, thereby ensuring that often the person sent to do a job (like talking down a violent suspect) is often ill-suited for the task - it was also massively inconvenient for me.  I had a 1.5 hour drive for a one-hour meeting (it happens) and then attempted to head to the East Bay to meet a friend for a bite before singing with my group.  Fate, it seems, had other plans for me, and after sitting on the 37 for twenty minutes and moving only half a mile (I *read* a book, I was going so slow), I headed home instead.  But four hours to get home from Santa Rosa is a little rough.  I was talking to myself by the end of the trip  - and not the way I usually do, but in a way that presages madness. 

My work is also a bit backed up, and the traumatizing traffic plus long hours plus the stress of work projects being behind was adding up to....well....a existential crisis.  It came last night, when I was fussing over a particularly complicated piece of communication, and everything I did was feeling tedious.  Here I was, working to improve some system at work, or create something to make something better, and what did it matter?  Who *really* cared?  I mean, it would just get changed again, down the line, by someone else - or worse, ME (agh! The need to re-do one's own work, such a life teacher) - and why take all this time to do it right when it wasn't even permanent?

That did it.  My mind, once gripping hold of this idea, could not be stopped, and my stressed out body ran with it too.  I mean, really, so my company has a mission, sure, we're changing the way the world eats - and we kinda of actually are, so it's not just bullshit - but what does that matter?  So some people eat healthier?  In the long run, what does it matter?  Those people are going to die, right?  And what if I were doing something else, like being a therapist?  So, I'd help others, but they too would die, eventually, and even art fades, and if it doesn't, what's the point of that anyway, and blah blah blah....Bukowski, Mozart, Jackson Pollack, Jesus Christ Superstar, Steven Colbert - so fucking what?  So I love them, now, here, in this moment, but it's all going, all fading, the abyss, the abyss, utter abyss of meaninglessness!

It was one of those moments.  I showed up at home, crying.  "It was all going so well," I said to my partner, "Until the last 15 minutes on the way home."

But I had to face it, because today was one of my big work events.  I do the office "events" - the holiday lunches, the employee appreciation weeks, the team builds, etc.  I did one last week for 40 people, but today's was 85, and my closest peers, with much more complicated logistics and higher risks.  I had to get up at 6am, make sure I had everything, people were relying on me.  And I did it, dealing with the dispatcher and our bus driver, the managers and vendors and farmers and coworkers.  It was a multi-stop event: two buses from two Bay Area points, meeting with several carpools near Santa Cruz, a stop at a farm, then on to a vendor fair and outdoor lunch, and finally a wine tasting at third location.  A lot of moving parts.

This type of event produces that typical "herding cats" feeling.  I am the main cat herder at work, and really, I like it.  Big days, like today - the team builds, the job fairs, and such - are within my scope and I usually produce a pretty successful event.  I've got loads of back up and assistance, but I'm the main person responsible. 

There were many things today that COULD have gone wrong - but they didn't.  The traffic wasn't bad, the buses miraculously arrived almost together at each location, the weather was cooperative - no spectacular sun but no nasty chill wind either, and that's a godsend when you're a quarter of a mile from the Pacific, right on beautiful Highway 1.  The equipment mostly worked, the food was really good, the bluegrass band was excellent, and the blackberries we picked in the U-Pick field were perfectly ripe - partially because we got to chose from hundreds of thousands of berries the *perfect* ones that we wanted.  These self-selecting berries, right off the vine, were about as good as you can get.  They would only have better if we'd been picking them in the sun, maybe.

[Editor's note: So sorry, if you read my original post - I lost an entire chunk of text here.  Severe laptop issues.  I will try and reconstruct it - but the original was better, I think.]

So, yes, it was a very pleasant day, just objectively.  But it also started to seem like it was a meaningful day, as well.  The vendors really appreciate us - the farmer whose farm we visited, who hosted the fair, thanked us. "It takes all of us," he said.  "The farmer is only half the equation, and you - " he gestured to all of us "-are the other half." 

It made us feel good, I think; it made me feel good, for sure.  I enjoy seeing meaningful partnerships.  And now - here I was, looking at all my fellow co-workers, my teammates, my colleagues, my peers...my friends, really.  OK, so maybe just work friends, but work friends who have loved each other for years, and sometimes, decades.  Really.  We did a introduction round (we literally do not all know each other) in which we said when we started, and most of the 85 people there today started in the '90's sometime.  It's that kind of group. 

So what if I only see them in a certain context, i.e. work?  When you see someone for 5, 10, 15 years (I'm at 14 with the company, in a couple months, who could have predicted *that*?), every holiday, every summer, at the store openings, at the team builds, at the occasional meeting...or when you work intensely close with them, over a period of time...it really creates a bond. 

And so I found myself, grumpy from lack of sleep and long days, warming up and then realizing - wait, I am with people I love.  I mean, I like them all, I love a lot of them and some of them I absolutely adore.  AND I am doing something good.  It's *not*useless.  It's *not* meaningless.  How could I have forgotten? 

It's about the moment.  We live in the moment - whether we live in the moment or not.  Future, schmuture - who cares if what program I am working on doesn't pan out or doesn't stick or (let's go the positive direction, here) what if it DOES stick and is, as they say, a "game changer" for my company?  Just as it was all equally meaninglessness, when looked at from the long haul, it became equally meaningful, when looked at from the different perspective of the eternal, never-ending now.  I was there, and I was around people I loved, and I was happy.  It meant what it was.

Now, the moment of despair at my spreadsheet was also what it was, but it wasn't the type of moment I prefer.  And therein was the real heart of the matter, I realized - I was labeling moments "good" and "bad."  I was all in when it came to "happy family reunion fun food connection" moments, and I was absolutely resistant of the spreadsheet moments.  Not all the time, actually - I know the spreadsheets need to be there.  Spreadsheets are the other side of the team build coin, like hot and cold, or low and high - you have to have one to have the other.  But too many spreadsheet moments - and/or too few happy love fun moments - and I get cranky.  I get peeved.  I cry on the way home. 

I guess that's just the way it goes.  I try and feel this, and during my recent epiphany, I did.  I *saw* us all playing our parts, all of us pretending to not remember the divine creatures - the single one Divine Creature - we all are.  I saw gods and goddesses today, in the field and farm and bus and winery.  They were *awesome.*  They jumped to the task at hand - many hands made light work of the bus clean up, for instance; we can function very quickly and easily as a team, so many of us.  The ones who were helping me, to whom I delegated aspects, all were stellar.  They all came right up to snuff.  They satisfied and delighted me (one of our core values).  We built community - one of them I hugged, a guy I've known for a long time and we'd normally never work together except for something like this event, and so this event was a way for us to (somewhat awkwardly) hug. 

I mean, that's about as meaningful as you can get.  The spreadsheets made me forget the divine love, and then the hugs brought it back.

I picture some of you reading this with some skepticism and/or cynicism.  Sure.  I get it.  Me too, sometimes - I feel that way.  Hence the existential crisis.

One friend, T, in particular, I imagine would respond that way, if he ever reads this, which is great, because his particular way of interacting with the world in general (and me in particular) really adds to the sum total of the knowledge of the Universe; I'll never forget one of the things he said, which has come back to me over and over, over the years, which is rather applicable to this particular subject:

Every argument is a circular argument, if you draw a big enough circle.

It was an evening we stayed up till dawn, talking, and I don't know how close to the end of this one of our epic conversations this little statement was - maybe we were tired, drunk, whatever - but I really understood it at the time.  I believe T gestured in a way to allegorically suggest the circle could be drawn around the sum total knowledge of the Universe, and I was like, "Ah.  Yep, I get it."  But I've chafed at that idea, because ultimately, it feels a little sad to me. 

But maybe I am to heed his sentiment - it all just *is."  Don't say yay or nay, to anything, any moment.  Just draw the circle ALL the way around and let the chips fall where they may. 

I'm sure he doesn't remember saying it, but it's reminded me also of the old Sufi story a Persian King who requested from his advisers and magicians for them to do something to sustain himself in times of adversity, and restrain him in times of abandon.  The wise men consulted among themselves for a long time, and finally presented him with a ring inscribed with these words:

This too shall pass.

Which means, I imagine, also applies to this moment, the one full of meaning (or not).  So be it.  Bring it on.