What happens when you lose all sense of purpose?
At the beginning of this month, I rented a 15-foot U-Haul truck, loaded all of my earthly possessions into it, joined my uncle who had flown out to Seattle to drive with me, and somewhat reluctantly began the cross-country trek back to the region of my birth and upbringing.
It was — and is — the very first time in my life that I’ve gone somewhere without having any idea of what might be next. What I left behind is on some level quantifiable, yet simultaneously priceless: A job of nearly nine years. A graduate program of three. A place of my own that I’d called home for more than eight. Scores of close friends I’d made over the course of that whole time.
I didn’t have any illusions that it would easy, even though I was returning to a place of familiarity where I have family. To the contrary, I anticipated that it would be really rough, precisely because I had absolutely no preordained goal, opportunity, or destination in place once I got here.
What I didn’t predict is just how quickly I would descend into a state of deep anxiety, depression, and spiritual malaise as a result.
To be sure, there have been ample moments of joy over the past month. One lesson I’ve learned just in the past few weeks is that often the full beauty of something is most apparent at its climax, consummation, or ending — like friendships that have been years in the making but will last a lifetime and dazzle the most as you bid farewell to each other for now.
(…Or, yes, like sex. But that’s not what I’m talking about here.)
And sometimes, a season of endings gives rise to beauty and life that might never have surfaced at all if not for the conclusion of other things — like the ability to reconnect with family and old friends you haven’t seen for a long time.
But that same season can bring with it a monumental sense of loss, not to mention brutal existential questions about your purpose and self-worth.
Fast-forward 24 days after my departure from Seattle, and I’ve received at least three rejection notes from prospective employers. Countless more haven’t gotten back to me at all and almost certainly never will. The world can feel like a very hostile place when you’re in a position of having to sell yourself, only to be turned away time and again.
What do you do when you’ve lost all sense of purpose — when you truly can’t think of any function you serve or objective for which to strive or even get out of bed in the morning?
Family and friends sometimes ask me what I’m passionate about, or what I want to do for a living. Both questions, in my estimation, sort of miss the mark. A better one might be something like this: What would make you feel as though you belong?
That, I think, has always been one of my toughest struggles — namely, the pervasive sense that I’ve never really belonged anywhere in this world, a place I was born into but simply don’t fit. Put another way, it’s as though the things I’ve tried in life thus far have been little more than aimless, unconnected stops along an equally aimless highway with no particular destination, all traveled on my own with an unrelenting sense of existential isolation.
This quote from the opening scene of Patch Adams has always resonated with me:
All of life is a coming home — salesman, secretaries, coalminers, beekeepers, sword-swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It’s hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in a driving snow; you don’t even know you’re walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel; how far away home can be.
What, where, who is home for me? I have no idea. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m not sure I will, either, for a very long time.
I’m disheartened and depressed right now. There’s no fix for that. Sometimes, though, when I’m in this state of mind, I get random, inexplicable messages from unexpected places, as though someone is trying to tell me that everything is going to be okay.
Like this one, which I saw on Facebook just now as I was struggling to write this post:
I’m not sure that I’d call my decision to uproot myself for the second time in a decade an “invitation” to anything other than melancholy and despair. But if anything at all brings me solace right now — and admittedly, it’s hard to find something — it’s exactly what I’ve said already.
Sometimes, the beauty or meaning of something isn’t totally apparent — or apparent at all — except in hindsight. Sometimes you have to wait for it to fully take shape in order to appreciate the wonder of it.
And sometimes, you have to let go of certain things in order to make space for the new — for things that would never have taken shape if something else hadn’t ended.
A former pastor of mine once said, “There are things learned in unchosen places that can only be learned in those places.”
Maybe that’s it. Maybe we sometimes have to lose our very sense of identity in order to truly find ourselves.
I hope. We’ll see.
