Should I Dig My Own Grave, and Bury Myself?
The last week.
The last week, in which I published: nothing.
It’s depressing to think about that, as I originally set out to write for thirty days straight.
What happened, you ask?
(You may not ask; you may not be surprised at all. After all, that is so very human nature.)
The cause of my sudden writing crash was not what I originally expected it to be, nor was it what I concluded it to be after deep thought.
Was it laziness? No; I was learning Python, reading “Flow,” practicing violin, going for 2+ mile walks every day.
Did I realize somewhere in my subconscious that I didn’t want to be a writer anymore? That writing was too commercialized and left a bad taste in my mouth?
That may have been part of it, but I can get around that pretty quickly.
It eluded me. I simply couldn’t find any reason to write.
Every time I went to write, my soul sighed a weighty, chasm-like sigh.
So much information was going in…shouldn’t there be plenty to come out?
News articles. Medium posts. Tutorials. Blog posts. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I even had a lengthy list of ideas to write about.
Still…
Nothing.
In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes that now more than ever we face an unprecedented feeling of “ontological anxiety,” or as we know it: existential dread. This unshakeable feeling that there is either no point in continuing life on our planet as we have known it, or that we will not be able to continue on. No hope. Nothing to drive us forward.
Csikszentmihalyi references the increased threat of nuclear destruction as a potential reason for this, but in our immediate day to day lives we are facing a very big and uncertain question mark that undoubtedly creates an unquestionable feeling of existential dread; COVID-19.
Nuclear warfare has been a sideline threat for long enough now that it has in a way, receded into our subconscious as something we just live with.
But COVID-19 has and is disrupting our daily lives in a big way. It took many things away from us that we had come to expect as being a part of life, and it also took away our previous ability to hope for a future in the way we had.
We just don’t know what is coming toward us.
For most of the days leading up to this last week, it has been relatively easy to delegate the pandemic and all of it’s ensuing fears and dread to “this too shall pass.” But as time has gone on, it becomes more and more apparent that the fall out from the virus will be likely far greater than the virus itself.
Will the jobs lost create more deaths than the virus itself, through starvation or suicide? Will the economy ever recover back to what it was? What political changes will take place that will alter our daily lives forever? Can we still plan to take a trip to see the Eiffel Tower? Will Big Ben be around for my kids to see?
In short — will the world still be able to create wonder and excitement for us after this is all over? What freedoms and choices will we potentially lose through this?
I asked myself “Is there any point in trying to succeed at anything after this?”
What kind of a world is coming after this?
We don’t know. And we can’t. But we do know that we can do the next thing we have to do.
We can support our friends and family by being there for them when they need to talk.
We can take control of our thoughts and direct them toward productive activities.
We can remember history and read about all the ways in which humanity has overcome great tragedies, setbacks, and disease.
We can remember that for so many of us, we have our health still, we have our homes to be comfortable in. We have people that love us and check in on us.
And I have my faith, which has become increasingly significant to me in the past weeks as well.
All this helped me to realize that my fear of the future was counterintuitive, and getting me nowhere.
Because there is so much to live for and write about, today. There is beauty in my day, today.
The fear of tomorrow makes us forget about the beauty of today.
And remembering that, I am here writing now. I beat the demon of existential dread and doubt.
But it haunted me for a good week.
It kept me from writing.
It kept me from hoping, even if for a few days.
Maybe it’s keeping you from hoping too. Maybe it’s got you stuck in a corner of your mind, worried about losing more things. Unsure about your future.
That’s why I am writing this. So you know you are not alone, and that we as humans are not alone.
There has always been evil and threats to our existence. Threats to our ability to hope. To move forward. To succeed.
Yet, as a human race, we have come through. We have persisted. We have changed. We have innovated. We have conquered.
And we will conquer again.
The world will be different after this.
Let us not be afraid of the differences or changes to come, but instead, embrace them for the better humans and better beings they will force us to become.
I’m writing again.
Will you?
