A Gong That Cannot Be Unrung

I usually find the onset of winter depressing. Sometime around November the air starts to get a certain type of thin and cold, while the plants, grass, and vegetation lose their foliage and color. Then suddenly, I look up and realize the deep blue of the summer skies has been replaced by a dreary gray. Whenever this realizing hits me year after year, I know there are some harder days ahead.

This winter I experienced the most difficult depression in a decade. I was reminded of how it feels to not want to exist any longer for a time; of waking up feeling completely numb from the inside out, overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness and distress. For several days I would wake up feeling bleak from the moment my eyes opened, and I didn't have the strength or willpower to get out of bed. I wrote a little about this towards the end of my last entry Worry Will Make You Miserable.

Throughout some of the more challenging and intense moments in life, I have often felt like there's some mysterious part of my being that never ceases to analyze and actively consider what's going on - like an unspoken observer who only listens and never speaks. I've sensed this kind of observation in moments of extreme pain or emotional duress, wondering how there's still some psychic channel that lucidly observes "Wow, this sure is painful!" with the upbeat sincerity of Ned Flanders.

Beyond the perception and commentary of this observer, the observer is otherwise silent, although lately I've been wondering if there may be something to be said about this observer's ability to give some type of psychic jab.

There was one particular winter morning in January when I awoke from a dream to the sound of a ringing gong. The sort of loud, obnoxious, permeating, and deafening clanging and ringing only a 10 year old kid beating a gong with a sledge hammer could make. Except when I woke up, there was no actual sound to be heard; it was all in my head, but it continued to resonate in my head deafeningly.

My work in Jungian therapy this last year has taught me to value and pay more mind to my dreams. Psychologist Carl Jung believed that dreams are a way our subconscious tries to speak to us, so I've been making an effort to record and pay mind to my dreams (this has been a positive experience so far).

The morning this experience happened, I didn't remember dreaming about a gong, but I know that the sound I heard - imaginary or not - came from somewhere, so I assume it was something dream-like. Enough so it felt like a wake up call or message, because it left me feeling internally shook. The residual clanging of the gong in my ears - that I still hear echoing in my mind to this day - was something I can only describe as a wake-up call that I needed to get my proverbial shit together.

In what felt like an instant, I became consciously aware of a multitude of beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and perspectives that were, for all intents and purposes, causing me a slow-rolling existential crisis. It felt like I had awakened in the driver seat of a car that was driving full speed towards a cliff, and I had no recollection how I had got there; I only knew I was there, and I was in trouble.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are. — Kierkegaard

In Kierkegaard's book Sickness Unto Death he shares the quote above, that "the most common form of despair is not being who you are." What this quote refers to is the misalignment between the self we are living and self we actually are beneath the surface. It drives at the heart of what it means to live an authentic existence, where the antidote to despair isn't happiness or comfort — it's the deliberate act of becoming yourself, of choosing the self you are rather than the one circumstance or other people have constructed for you.

When I mentally heard the ringing of the gong, I became aware. Aware that somehow, somewhere along the way of the last few years of my life I had drifted from the pursuit of a personal, authentic existence to being someone and living in a way I didn't authentically resonate with, holding beliefs I never consciously chose.

I had become someone overly-consumed by the opinions of others, and I lost my sense of self-sufficiency. I stopped identifying myself with who I understood myself to be, and instead how others perceived me. I was afraid to fail at my job and be imperfect. I believed no one could see me sweat and I could never disappoint anyone, big or small. I was exhausted and burned out on both ends.

With this realization, I concluded that something must change. I could not handle living or feeling that way any longer because the mental and dare I say spiritual pain I was dealing with were too glaring to ignore. In response, I told myself I would have to get used to disappointing people. I would have to learn to sit and be comfortable with my imperfections.

So I returned to the basics of Stoicism, reminding myself what is and isn't under my control, and firmly reminding myself that other people's opinions or expectations of me are outside my control. In the words of Epictetus, there are four things I can control: my aversions, desires, opinions, and goals; anything else is outside. Day after day, I continually interrogate everything that crosses my path and causes me internal friction — some things are inside my control, but most things are not.

This paradigm shift has brought me a lot of liberation in the many months since. I don't mean to make it sound overly simple, although in a way, it is as simple as it sounds — not that it means doing it is so simple.

This path and journey are not "new" to me — I've been down this road before many years ago when I first deconverted. So there is a real sense in which the "foundation was previously laid" and I've merely returned to my roots. Certainly, forging this path was/is substantially harder the first time, but returning to it a second time has a feeling reminiscent of "coming home" while I fight through the thicket of difficult thoughts and habits that enshroud the path.

And while I'm still actively processing through this event — just this last weekend I was sensing the groanings of some inner despair — I believe this experience has taught me something valuable about the existentialist's journey.

At my current age of 33, I've been through a hefty handful of existential crises— more than I think the average person my age has had. That's just the nature of who I am and the life I've lived, or my facticity if you recall. While these crises come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from big and overwhelming to small yet terrifying, I am reminded of a simple truth. Much like being startled by someone angrily beating a gong with a sledge hammer, existential crises can come out of nowhere, and when they do, they are often jarring, disorienting, frustrating, and resonant.

There is a cold and sobering reminder that we have but one life to live, and our time in it is short and expiring. There are passions and desires within us to see, do, create, realize, manifest, or experience a wide variety of things, and yet so often we smother these ambitions with drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, luxurious food, laziness, video games, reels, YouTube, and beyond. Not that these things are wrong in-themselves, but that we lose sight of what is important to ourselves in favor of these things. It is much easier to feel tired at the end of the work day and self-medicate until the morning arrives, and repeat the process again day after day. But does this lead to an authentic, fulfilling life? While I cannot speak for others, I know it is a firm no for myself.

It is not easy to write blogs, work on my book, exercise, read, or do things that I find meaningful for myself after a day of work. But I must realize that I see within myself passions to do these things, and when I choose the path of laziness more often than the path of self-creation, I am selling myself short. The life of laziness is not the life I would like to live an infinite number of times over.

While once I was content in my comforts, the desire to create something meaningful for myself is a gong that cannot be unrung.