Could It Be — Could It Really Be — That Life Is a Gift and Not an Assignment?

I’ve been trying to avoid acknowledging it for hours, days, weeks, months in some ways. For lots of reasons.

When you’re a writer you’re supposed to be a wise, confident soul who gives to your readers, not a lost, vulnerable soul who takes from them. And when you’re a grown-up you’re supposed to act grown up. And let’s throw this one in too: When you’re a man you’re supposed to, well, be a man — you’re supposed to be strong and self-assured.

Pick your (mis)perception.

I’m going to stop fighting it, though. I’ve reached the point I always need to reach before I take a risk — the tipping point where the cost of changing course edges lower than the cost of staying the course. Apparently I’m meant to just go ahead and finally, grudgingly express where and how I really am today. For Pete’s sake, as it were.

Here goes …

I don’t have it all together.

I am hurting, for reasons that would be totally understandable if it were anyone else in my life but haven’t yet seemed to qualify when it comes to me. I am turned around in circles; I really am lost and vulnerable. The term cognitive dissonance doesn’t begin to describe my thinking. My brain is tied in knots I can’t seem to fully unravel … yet. And my heart is being infiltrated by a toxic emotional mixture of grief, anxiety, trauma, depression, fear, guilt, regret, lack of confidence, and low self-worth.

All of which makes it damn hard to write anything at all, let alone something that might benefit someone else. So I’m sorry. I really am. I can only hope that in being genuine here I will make you feel a little less alone if and when the ick ever strikes you. It’s the best I’ve got at the moment.

Because I have the ick right now. And the ick has me.

I am wondering what’s happened to me — again. And what I’m doing here — again. And what it all means — again. I am trying, in the spirit of think less and do more, to at least come up with a grain or two of wisdom I can share through my writing … when what I really need is a boatload of wisdom to be shared with me. The kind of wisdom that will slice through the ick — all of my doubts and questions and pain — and resonate with me for the long haul. The Answer(s). The real Answer(s), not just temporary answers. The one(s) I always thought would somehow, someday be revealed to me on a heavenly electronic billboard accompanied by triumphant music.

I am working hard. I’m nothing if not a self-care practitioner these days. I see a counselor regularly. I work out practically every day. I’m trying to do a better job on basics like drinking enough water and eating my lunch and taking my vitamins and scheduling my time. I rub essential oils on myself, and smell them too, in an effort to stay in the present instead of straying off into the future or getting mired in the past. I go to acupuncture on blind faith, with the goal of releasing whatever dam of energy garbage is mucking up my insides. The other day I even let the acupuncturist tape little beads onto pressure points inside my right earlobe; they’ve been there ever since.

I talk to God each day, too, in my own way, asking Him/Her/It/Them for strength and guidance and, especially, plain old peace and joy.

What a mess.

Driving it all, I’ve at least figured out, is an unfolding, unexpected wrestling match with a major philosophical question: Is life an assignment to be carried out, or is it a gift to be received and relished and simply lived?

I thought I knew the answer to this one; I didn’t even know there was a question: I have spent my entire existence believing, somehow or other, that life is indeed an assignment to be carried out … and that I have been failing my assignment miserably, largely because I can’t pinpoint what the hell it is. I beat the crap out of myself for what I do and for what I don’t. “Enough” never comes. I’m never doing enough and I’ve never done enough. I’m never being enough and I’ve never been enough. I never am enough.

I can’t yet figure out why I even think such things; I wish I could. I only know that I think them, and that they are the bumper sticker that discolors my whole existence at times.

So when my counselor sits across from me and argues that life is not an assignment to be graded, a task to be completed, but is instead merely a gift to be received and relished and simply lived — that enough is already here, and that fulfilled purpose will unfold organically through merely going forth each day — well, that intrigues me. It’s like liberation is being dangled right in front of me, if only I can trust that it’s real and then accept it.

So far I just can’t do it. It seems too good to be true. Like I’m being set up. I can trust in short spurts. But then I stumble and have to go back to the starting line. More work. More self-care. More questions. More frustration.

I am 48+ years into a mindset and a belief system that both need to change. It’s going to take a while, I suppose. But is it any wonder I just want to cry sometimes?

So today I just did. I cried for the people and places I’m missing. And I cried for the answers I seem to be missing too. The cost of letting it all out had edged lower than the cost of holding it all in.

And when I was done it occurred to me …

I’ve always felt like my life is a puzzle that I’ll never figure out. Now I’m left wondering: Maybe there is no puzzle. Maybe there never was one. Maybe there is no big riddle to solve. Maybe there is no big purpose to discern ahead of time; maybe it all just emerges. Maybe life really is a gift — and that’s it. Take it or leave it.

I want to take it. Why can’t I?

Peter Vogt

I’m a writer. An essayist, to be more exact. I tell stories here—true stories, from my own life, in hopes they will make a positive difference in yours.

I share laughs and tears, insights and observations, frustrations and realizations, relying all the while on the storytelling wisdom of Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write.

It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.