This is a time period of difficult feelings. While it is good that the city fixed the letters on the front of the Bon Air Library, and it is a sad matter that the library employees are going to be put on furlough due to reduced city revenues/budget woes. But local governments in the United States and Canada are locally dependent on the tax revenues derived within their boundaries, and when a large amount of revenue that was planned for does not materialize, hard choices must be made.
In my opinion we are in something of a wilderness at this point while we are waiting for our lives to begin again. We are dependent on people to make decisions for us and we are not in control. I was thinking that I would share this chapter I have written for a book I have pitched and I would be a good time to share with you about wildernesses.
It is a long read, and if you choose to read it, I hope that it helps you with the difficult feelings many of us are experiencing during this time.
BEING OKAY IN THE
WILDERNESS
Many of us have
had times in our lives where it feels like we are lost in the midst of a wilderness. The wilderness may feel like a desert, a deep
forest or being stuck out at sea. The wilderness is a lonely, miserable and oppressive
place of despair and humiliation. These
are lengthy situations of survival and waiting that can involve an identity
crisis.
We get thrust into
these wildernesses for many reasons. Some of the reasons are our fault. Job
losses, divorces, deaths, or other kinds of failures put us there. Sometimes the wilderness happens outside of
our control because the timing was terrible. Recessions and economic “bubbles”
outside our control bring wildernesses when jobs, job opportunities, employers,
and even economic sectors seem to evaporate.
We feel vulnerable
if not naked in very raw ways in the wilderness because the road we had
committed to with everything we had dead-ended in the middle of nowhere. We may have invested blood, sweat and tears
in career, academic and relationship directions that promised prestige and
fulfillment only to find out we are unqualified for the few meaningful jobs
available. We may have pursued trusting
relationships with others that fell flat or did not materialize, or even ended
in the appearance of betrayal. The
wilderness makes us critical of ourselves where we tell ourselves we were
foolishly wasting our time, pushing our luck in risking things, and that our
judgment was poor. Our self-esteem in
the wilderness can be all but decimated.
There are
spiritual aspects to the wilderness. How
we have ordered our world view can get brutally refuted. What we expect from God in provision (meeting
our needs) and deliverance from our problems does not come when we either want
it or feel that we need it. We pray and
we do not get the answers that we want or expect. We do get what we think we need. We may suffer and struggle to make sense of
why what is happening is happening. We may be around people who do not
understand our beliefs or even mock us because we have them. Our faith can be
shaken in the wilderness because what we have held in our hearts gets
challenged.
These wildernesses
are not just spiritual, but also have economic and vocational dimensions as
well. We feel embarrassed and ashamed because we are
not what we should be. We do not have
the prestige and resources we deserve.
We are not where we should be in terms of our careers and status, and we
do not seem to qualify for any of the decent-paying, available positions. We may
feel abandoned because the people we knew and depended on prior to the
wilderness are gone. We may live by
subsistence because the expected full-time income is not coming.
To survive the
wilderness it may be necessary to take one or more terrible jobs that pay at
least something. Some of these workplaces may be risky and exploitative
commission situations.
Other such jobs are temporary, menial
positions where the person in charge is ugly and abusive.
These bad work environments have drama and
abuse especially when there is unethical and unfair behavior by those in
control.
In these situations it is possible to
simultaneously feel gratitude and humiliation when people ask: “What do you do?”
In the
midst of the abuse and chaos we likely grieve and get mad at ourselves where we
analyze and dwell on we got stuck in this situation.
Our analysis of our situation erodes our
remaining self esteem as it does not supply us any solutions but only possible
causes and blaming.
We are helpless
because we depend on unseen others. The
unseen people will make the decision that leads to our escape from the
wilderness. However, we often get repeated rejection for all the escape attempts
we make. So in the wilderness, we are
unsure of who we are; what we are doing; what we are going to do; and how long
we will be there. In the helplessness
and lack of opportunity we may feel stupid and engaging in self-loathing.
Along the line of
job opportunities, the wilderness tends to make pyramid schemes seem legitimate.
They do not say “no” when there is nothing
else but rejection, and they hard-sell the potential success.
Of course the fine print is that you have to make
the sacrifice and try to sell everyone you know in your family and all your friends.
The people in your network who have
money and interest are in likely short supply and so even these schemes are not
a viable option.
These wilderness situations are like an old
traveling carnival fun house in which there is promise that proves to be a fraudulent
illusion.
In our
vulnerability and mostly destroyed self-confidence we tend to think all kinds
of catastrophic thoughts. These include
the worst possibilities that we will never be able to fix or solve. When we feel like this and think like this we
feel like we are on the brink of losing all we have because we are not seeing
the solution that delivers us from all our problems. Furthermore, finding the solution or rescue from
the wilderness is impossible because in the midst of our lack of self-trust we
are unsure of what the problem really is?
We feel humiliated even while we
are all alone thinking our thoughts.
This chapter looks
at what we can do to be okay in the wildernesses of life. It discusses coping strategies that include gaining
one’s bearings and daily living methods.
It will examine when the wilderness might be artificial and of our own
making.
Bearings
We
do not normally think about our bearings when we are not in a wilderness as we
have them and we are in “auto pilot.” Our
goals are clearly marked in a sufficiently ordered fashion. Whether
or not we are satisfied, there is at least a direction with purpose and meaning. Whether
or not we are happy our needs are met. We
have some kind of security with the bearings.
Whether we are mindful or mindless, we have an idea of who we are . . .
where we are going and we are okay.
Our
identities are typically defined by the direction we are going. We get
a sense of security by our identity. We
belong with that identity and direction. If we are no longer that person going in that
direction we can become insecure individuals lacking identities if not
suffering identity crises. There is an
intense distress when we can no longer identify with the profession or roles in
which we had invested our hearts, money and time.
The distress
increases when we have to be around bad people in terrible work and living
situations. This distress is a reaction
to both perceived and real dangers. The
bad types demonstrate that they are aggressive and habitually out to exploit or
manipulate others because they can. However, we may not understand that we were
manipulated until it is too late. We may
realize that we have done something dishonest or unethical in the process. We are
tempted to . . . or may actually lose some of the bearings of our moral compass
when we are desperate to survive.
Losing our
bearings in the wilderness leads to even more disorganization and distress. There is more to lose when there is no
focus. There is a need to regain
bearings and have order in both life and morality. Regaining bearings starts with making an
admission and clarifying process as to what is necessary and what matters.
Admit there is a wilderness and take
stock
Admitting
that there is a wilderness is painful.
We may cry and we may feel on the verge of a panic attack because we are
already highly stressed. We will need
to make effort to say:
1) Yes, I am in a
wilderness where I cannot see what is far ahead of me.
2) I can only see
what is right in front of me.
3) It is possible
that I have more to lose if I do not do something.
4) I need to get
some bearings.
People do not normally change
unless they realize there is a problem, and realization is crucial in gaining
one’s bearings in the wilderness.
In the process of
getting bearings we have to take stock or inventory of what we have and what is
there. While this is not a highly
intellectual process, taking inventory means an actual list (whether on our
phone, computer, or actual paper) of what we have in terms of:
1)
Money,
2)
Physical assets (the stuff we actually own, like a car
and clothes),
3)
The debts and bills we have.
4)
The place where we are living and how long we can be
there?
We must make decisions about what
we are going to do with what we have that include.
1)
Where can we store our things?
2)
Who do we have to negotiate with?
3)
What are the bill due dates?
We must then explore our immediate
options in terms where we must go to live?
1) Who do I know
with whom I can stay?
2)
What are my other affordable housing options?
a)
Do I go to a homeless shelter?
b)
Who I can I ask to identify someone who is taking borders or renters?
3) What is the worst or least I am willing to accept in deciding a place
to live?
For many the process can seem
surreal that we are asking these questions and listing the answers, but it is a
clarifying process that brings a clearer and more orderly picture.
The
typical, recurring answer to the questions above list should be your family
members, but family may be unavailable.
First, your family may be financially unable to help you.
Second, your family may be too far away—as on
the other side of the world or in another country.
Third, you may have burned your bridges by
your behavior in which you have hurt your family members or you made yourself
untrustworthy.
One more reason is
family dysfunction—your family is unable to emotionally and mentally be a
support because of their problems.
If your family cannot help you, then you may
need to connect with a church or other agencies in your area to get answers to these
questions.
In
taking stock, we must sometimes intensely concentrate or focus on the present. We may have to repeatedly refocus in the now
whether it is one-hundred times in an hour or day. We may have to admit to ourselves that we
hurt and we are in need. We are crying or on the verge of crying. Our hurt is
real but we have got to focus on something. We must make sense of what is in
front of us.
To
make sense we must create some sense of order in the way we focus on what is in
front of us by answering four general questions. What is necessary now? What matters now? What is good judgment or responsible behavior
right now? What can I do right now? When we are answering these questions and
following through on the answers, we are beginning to set bearings because we
can handle what is immediately in front of us.
What
is necessary now?
Clarifying what is
needed or necessary in the immediate present is the best place to start. We have to ask whether our basic needs are being
met. Out of the confusion or the state
of being overwhelmed, some people may sincerely or sarcastically ask: What are
my basic needs?
Abraham Maslow (1943)
provided a good answer when he identified what he called a “hierarchy of
needs.”
In a nutshell he noted that we have
physical needs, safety needs and a number of types of emotional needs.
If the physical needs and safety are not met
first the emotional needs are not going to matter to us.
Thus, our physical
and safety needs must be met first. Do
we have a roof over our heads? Do we
have the food and clothes we need today?
Are we in a safe place? Where do we have to go to get these
things?
Somewhere
in our safety needs in the 21st century include being able to get
around and having a working wireless or cell phone service with service. In essence we could live in the moment but
being able to communicate but being able get away from danger can be
crucial. For many people in larger
cities laid out for cars, having a car can be necessary to get around to job
interviews and jobs.
What
matters now?
For some there can
be a conflict between what matters and what is needed. We determine some of our priorities with our
emotions and not the facts. We make some
of our priorities to avoid perceived humiliation and feared judgment. We often painfully learn as we go that we are
physically getting by without something we thought we needed.
At this point
there is good news and there is bad news.
The good news is that we quite often learn that we do not need that much
to get by. The bad news is that we still
feel terrible because of the unmet emotional needs.
Taking Maslow’s
hierarchy a few steps further we have needs to belong with other people and
needs to feel good about ourselves and what we are doing. As discussed earlier when we are in the
wilderness we are not where we want to be in terms of career, job, or vocation. Many of us truly experience the emptiness
that comes from not doing the work that we want to do, and we are not
necessarily being accepted by the group of people doing that work; we are not
feeling fulfilled.
We feel negative
emotions when our needs are not met. In this case the feelings we tend to feel include
frustration, embarrassment, humiliation and shame.
Because of our
state of humiliation, pretentiousness is very possible mask or disguise in the
wilderness. It serves as a coping skill
or defense mechanism in the form of denial that our situation is not that bad.
We can create an air of grandiosity as to our importance, but it is an illusion
(if not a delusion) and not who we truly are.
Some without integrity or maybe even a conscience truly wear the mask of
pretentiousness and don’t give it a second thought.
As part of the
mask it may be difficult to think about character and the moral compass when we
are surviving in the wilderness. Some people feel that they must do anything
possible to get what is needed, even if that means stretching the truth or
engaging in dishonesty when others appear to be doing it. (This especially happens in the commission
sales situations.) Desperation increases
the level of risk one is willing to take and the compromises one is willing to
make.
Violating
one’s own values out of desperation and pretentiousness often leads to unhealthy
rationalization. Some people in the
wilderness who go against the values they have practiced may call those
principles “antiquated” or out of touch with the real world. They try to ease their feelings of guilt by
saying to themselves and others that what they are doing is necessary to get
by.
However, the
strain of guilt will only further stress those with character who value
integrity because they are putting forth and perpetuating a lie. If and when found out for who they truly are,
there is further damage that can keep them in the wilderness longer. Being real, honest and humble about who we
are and the condition we are in while in the wilderness may indeed be painful,
but it less risky than succumbing to the temptation of acting pretentious.
Our values that
comprise our moral compass and character speak to what matters to us. Our very sense of wrong and right helps avoid
guilt that will only distress us further.
Our moral compass points to what our principles and priorities are,
where we should begin to regroup, re-focus, or at least try.
We have a
conundrum with no easy answer as sometimes we feel that what is right and
honest costs us something, and maybe it indeed does. However, practicing integrity and honesty does
not put us at risk of legal charges.
If given the
choice between working 2 or 3 service jobs that pay minimum wage versus a
questionable, commissioned sales job while in the wilderness, it likely would
be better to take the minimum wage jobs.
It is more stable to stay busy making at least something guaranteed than
engaging in the risk and stress and no guarantee that risky commission sales
jobs bring. Stability can breed clarity
and that can lead to further gaining of bearings.
Not a
Clean and Neat Process
It should serve to
say the process of getting one’s bearings is not necessarily going to be clean
and neat. It can be messy and confusing to sort out realistic and unrealistic priorities. But realistic
priorities tend to be short-term and not long-term.
The long-term
situation maybe in the back of our minds, but staring at it amounts to a distressful
waste of time. The long-term situation in the wilderness is
at best a guess or our imagination. If
our imaginations are contemplating the worst outcomes, those are potential catastrophes
we believe we will never be able to handle.
If we spend a lot of time fantasizing on where we want to be, we may
have some initial pleasant feelings but will likely end up depressed in the end
because we are not there. Either result
of looking too far ahead distracts us from what can be done now and drains us
of the energy needed to do it.
Furthermore,
dwelling on the past is also a drain that does not make us better individuals.
Despite all the proverbs and maxims against it, it is very human to remember
the past and take it a step farther to dwell on it—it is a part of grieving. However, with the memories come feelings—both
good and bad. The good ones are what we call nostalgia. The bad memories with their feelings have the
potential effects akin to paralyzing us or locking us away in our own private
jail cell. The usual products of
dwelling on the past are a bitter face, negative tone of voice, angry words, repetitive
talking about how you are a miserable victim, and avoidance by others who hate
being around those things.
Logically and
rationally, the long-term situation is created by repeated action in the
present, so indeed what we do now to gather our bearings is crucial in the
wilderness.
As we gather and maintain our
immediate bearings, we can begin to explore our longer term options. We can ask questions, knock on doors, fill
out job applications, and network to examine possibilities. We may get some abrupt “no” answers, some
polite “maybe” answers and more than enough awkward or embarrassed “I’m not
sure yet” answers when it comes to options.
The “maybe” and “I’m not sure yet” answers mean we wait.
Waiting
There are times of
waiting in the wilderness when it seems that there is nothing more we can do
and we have no power to make anything else happen. We are dependent upon known or unknown others
to act or make a decision. When we wait
we pass the time until we get an answer or the expectation is fulfilled. In its ideal form we are peacefully still and
do nothing when we wait.
When we are in the
middle of the wilderness we do not have peace and we feel that we must do
something and rumination monopolizes our thoughts as a substitute form of
activity. Regardless of how unproductive
it is (as discussed above), it is human to ruminate or dwell on the past. We will likely be critical of ourselves because
none of us survive matters perfectly. In our self-critique we pull off scabs and
emotionally stab ourselves again and again as we think about the “could haves,”
“should haves,” and “would haves.” It is
normal to have these moments. They will subside and we will feel “less badly”
when we get distracted by something else. Waiting means repeatedly tolerating
unpleasant emotions and distress as we pass the time in the wilderness.
Waiting is
distressful because our mind wants to go somewhere but our body cannot. When there is a greater investment of time,
emotion, or money there is a higher sense of stress because we have put a lot
of our heart in the matter. Waiting for
negative things to happen brings upon a variant of stress called “dread.” With waiting comes worry.
Worry
When we worry, we
tend to dwell about three categories of issues.
The first is an issue where we are dependent upon the decision or action
of someone else and we have no control but are helpless in the matter and we
dread the negative possibilities. If we
are not dependent upon another, then the subject of worry is the outcome of a
future matter (like the long-term situation discussed above) or an event and it
not turning out the way we want it to and what we will do if the worst happens. The third category of worry is when we take
ownership of a problem that is not ours to own.
Worry is a form of
anxious thinking that masks itself as analysis and problem-solving. It is a problem-focus that is not productive
because no practical and reasonable solutions present. Sometimes the problem is a manufactured one that
is not real or likely. While worrying is
a human tendency it is a pseudo-activity; we feel that we are doing something
but we are not.
As a form of
anxiety worrying stimulates our bodies to produce physiological reactions that motivate
us to run from dangers even if no real, factual or physical threat exists in
the moment. If we merely feel or think there is a threat, we can feel anxiety. Regardless if it is real or perceived, anxiety
stimulates the adrenal gland to produce adrenalin to make us run from the
danger, but we do not run it off, it causes muscle tension, headache, and
gastro-intestinal problems. Furthermore,
the adrenalin produced by worrying makes us restless and we have difficulty relaxing,
going to sleep or even focusing.
Continued worrying
can eventually lead to panic attacks. When
we do more of it we get increasingly agitated and restless. We can press
ourselves that we must do something but we are stuck and maybe even feel like a
failure because we cannot solve the problem. We are thinking with our feelings
and not with our rational minds, so with “nothing to do” the tendency is to
keep worrying because it feels like we are doing something. Thinking with feelings tends to be impulsive
and rapid that includes jumping to conclusions that are practically
impossible. Such thinking also includes dwelling
on the worst possible scenarios that we will never be able to resolve all by
ourselves. When our mind and body have
had too much of this anxiety and self-manufactured hopelessness, a panic attack
happens.
Panic
attacks caused by worrying are more likely to happen when we are by ourselves
and have nothing else to do. In this case there is also no one else with us to
help us stay in reality. At this point
we have brainwashed ourselves into thinking that what we think could happen is
happening, and we can do nothing about it.
Worrying leading to a panic attack is a valid example of the
cliché’: “Insanity is doing the same
thing over again and expecting different results.”
It
is no surprise that worrying can and does become habit especially in the
wilderness. It is a choice that we do
not realize that we make or that we have been making because it is so natural
and automatic to do. Not worrying is can be a difficult, intentional action,
but if we are going to get and keep our bearings in the wilderness we at least
need to do less of it. It is indeed a
challenge to stop worrying or reduce how much we do worry.
Reducing
our worrying while in the wilderness
Since
worry is a form of thinking, the general strategy is changing what we think.
Our thoughts should be focused on the present.
Our standards should be realistic and not overly-demanding. We may have to fill our minds with other
content. We may have to get out, connect
with other people and do things to balance our thinking. Reducing worry may have to be a multi-faceted
commitment that includes changing what we think and reducing the amount of time
we are in our heads.
The starting point
in worry reduction is practicing the view that solvable problems are only those
that we can handle in the here and now. Future
problems do not get solved until their times come. We all know past problems but they only exist
in our memories and will not literally or actually get solved because they have
passed. The useful here question is “What can
literally be done now?”
Worrying about “past
problems” is dwelling on them. There is
a difference between remembering the past and dwelling on the past. Remembering comes and goes and sees both good
and bad. Dwelling is obsessing on the
negatives of the past to the point of ignoring the good of the past. Furthermore, with dwelling we judge ourselves
in a perfectionistic manner as if we should have been the all-knowing and
all-powerful God. We see ourselves as so
stupid that dwelling is necessary to avoid it from happening again.
While indeed there
may have been terrible events and situations, we can choose and commit to stopping
dwelling, and practicing stopping dwelling on the past right now. This commitment can be started by practicing
that:
·
No human (including you and me) is born into
this world knowing everything and we make mistakes,
·
People of all intelligence levels learn from and
do not repeat most mistakes,
·
Dwelling on the past does not make us better but
only bitter,
·
Dwelling wastes time and energy that could be
better used elsewhere, and
·
Things may not have turned out the way you
wanted them to just because of what you think are your mistakes that got you
where you are.
In a nutshell we stop worrying
about or dwelling on the past by changing what we think now and sticking with
it.
Worrying about the
future is essentially dwelling on the negatives that could happen and that we
are not going to get what we want or expect and it is likely going to be bad if
not a disaster. In such cases our
imaginations conceive situations where we against all hope will be helpless and
destroyed. We can think up absurd
possibilities that infinitesimal chance of happening. As previously discussed,
such thinking makes us highly anxious.
If we stay focused on worries, we will
·
Feel all the more miserable,
·
Lower our
self-esteem and,
·
Give ourselves over to potential panic
attacks.
It would great if
we could all just stop worrying, period. But we humans will still do some worrying,
especially in the wilderness. Stopping
worrying about the future can be hard work in which we stay in the present and
stay focused.
Worry can be an
addicting behavior. There will be times (no
matter how well we have done in not worrying) where we will get absorbed again in
our worries. At times worry seems to
have a modicum of wisdom because the subject we ruminate on is important if not
crucial. If we catch ourselves, we can stop worrying
and get our minds on something else.
What We Do While We Wait
If we aim not to
worry while we wait, we have to be doing something. Stopping worrying usually means starting
something else. We may actually have to start and continue a
number of activities and practices that to maintain order, create meaning, and
begin to look ahead for opportunities. Waiting is probably as much an art as it is a
method. We have unfulfilled expectations
which we must endure through the time until they are fulfilled. When we have unfulfilled
needs, we tend to have various forms of anxiety and anger that physically
stress us.
Assuming that that
we have gained some bearings, it is crucial to maintain order in our lives.
Maintaining order means continuing those practices and methods that keep us
stable. As products of this focus, we
will live within our means and limits and avoid chaos and drama. Maintaining
such order in the wilderness means daily or weekly review of what is necessary
and what matters.
In addition to the
regular review of what matters there is often the need to create distractions
for ourselves in the forms of some kind of project or activity. These projects are not necessarily going to
be grandiose but some kind of cheap or free achievement or accomplishment that take
some time, challenge us to do something or better us as a person. The
activities may have to create some kind of meaning that help us show that we
have meaning and purpose in the lives of other people.
We are being okay
in the wilderness when we are creating meaning and we matter. Yes, our
self-esteem and identity are still probably damaged and we are in pain, but we
begin to develop a larger view that the world is bigger than us in terms of who
people are and what they need. While not perfect, having a bigger picture gives
us a different perspective on our problems which can improve our emotional
state.
Part of the bigger
picture can include developing gratitude or at least a sense of
thankfulness. When we are thankful, we
are mindful of how it could be worse it could be. We hopefully recognize that
despite being in a wilderness, we have our needs met and we are living and
breathing.
When we are in the wilderness, we have no
clue as to how long we are going to wait there, and we don’t necessarily know
what we need to do to get out, but if we want to get out, we have to start
knocking and exploring opportunities. There is no magic to knocking and searching,
but for most of us in the wilderness we have to do it. There will be starts,
stops, and rejections, but the person who is diligent and patiently persists
for ways out of the wilderness will find them.
The Artificial Wilderness or One of Our Own
Making
Part of the
wilderness ending may mean being willing to accept that doors have closed.
Maybe a dream is shattered, and a career path is not going to work out, or a
career in one field is over, and there is a sense of grief and loss. The wilderness is essentially one putting
the rest of life on hold while waiting for the dream to come to reality, something
that proves to be a foolish fantasy.
Giving up dreams
that are keeping us in the wilderness is equivocal to surrendering. Surrendering means we have failed in
something that we had based our self-esteem and reputation on. Surrendering
also means grieving the time, energy, blood, sweat and tears invested in the
dream. We fight surrendering because we
do not like to lose and we do not like to be humiliated. (But does anyone like
the feeling of humiliated?)
However, here is
often a point in time where surrendering can also bring about a sense of
relief.
A chased dream that either gets
farther and farther away from us or continues to be beyond our fingertips can
evolve into a weight on our shoulders that increases with the time, energy, and
resources put into the pursuit. When we give up the dream that is not going to
happen the weight also is gone and we can move on.
The process of the wilderness ending may be
working through the different emotional states of grief and loss and concretely
demonstrating acceptance through pursuing a different path.
People who fail to
grieve or stay stuck in grief also may stay stuck in the wilderness or enter a
wilderness of their own creation. Some
dreams are pursued to the cost of putting the rest of life on hold. The
wilderness of one’s own creation often occurs that dream is not happening, and a
person refuses to accept the reality that its pursuit is causing great
emotional, relational, and financial detriment.
While there are views that one should pursue dreams and never give up,
there are times when a dream is obviously not going to happen, and the better
option is to move on to something else. When giving up the pursuit of a dream in order
to get out of the wilderness is the healthier option, it is not always the
easier choice and it is not painless.
Lessons of the Wilderness
Being in and
getting through the wilderness has a way of teaching us hard but meaningful lessons
about ourselves, our priorities, and our ways. While waiting in the wilderness we often have
clarity that many of our so-called needs prove to be mere expectations or
luxuries. We prove them as such because we demonstrate that we either made due
or did without them. The discovery of
our resilience in such situations should be a relief but it is not a happy
clarification process as our hearts were set on them and our energies were
focused on getting them.
Learning
resilience in the wilderness is scary and frustrating. Not having what we thought we needed can
bring on an intense sense of abandonment and panic. The small and slow steps we take in the
wilderness help us gain more and more knowledge of what we are capable of and
not capable of, but we do not learn it as we think we should. It can seem that
we have reached the end of our knowledge and we start to take slow and small
steps because it is hard to see where we are going. Furthermore, the distress of not meeting the
standards that give us self-esteem and a sense of competency is humiliating. The wilderness presents us with a tension
between self-esteem and humility and we learn both an emotional and factual knowledge
we leave the wilderness with a sense of enlightenment of what is both real and
what is possible.
What is real in
the wilderness is the learning of our humanity.
Our self-esteem is attached to the energy we spend on our pursuits. When
we have been successful at a pursuit that we hold as essential for our needs,
we at feel competent. However, the
wilderness brings a feeling of failure and foolishness that we work through because
we had based our reputation and our self-esteem on a dead-end and we may
humiliation even if no one is watching us and paying attention. Such experiences of humiliation hopefully
instill in us the value of being humble and not pretentious in how we talk
about ourselves and looking at ourselves.
The End of the Wilderness: A New Beginning
When
we come out of the wilderness or the wilderness ends, we find a substantial and
factual new direction of our lives that gives us the senses of hope and relief.
The direction of life begins to excite
us and we begin to feel hopeful that something good is coming. We can gain an identity that we can be proud (or
somewhat proud) of when we talk to others about who we are and what we do.
The
end of the wilderness is existentially different for people given expectations
and desires. Some people find that the ending
of the wilderness involves moving away from a location or city where they can develop
a new identity or reputation. Others
wildernesses may end with the finding of new jobs or new relationships. The ending of the wilderness may not be the
end-all be all of one’s life and it may not feel spectacular given the hopes
and dreams that are dashed, but it is clear that there is a life direction gives
a sense of fulfillment.
A Vignette
Johnny
had just gotten his bachelor’s degree with great hopes of working in his chosen
creative field. He invested in his degree program by going on internships. A recession came on just before he graduated
and job opportunities dried up because companies were not looking for his
credentials, especially the corporation at which he had interned (they were
laying people off).
What
made matters more complicated was that Johnny could not go home and stay with his
parents. They had moved out of his
childhood home and into a one-bedroom retirement condo in another city and had
no room for him. Johnny’s solution was
to find a bed in a house with some guys he had known in college. He had a small room in the basement that had
some privacy but it was cold.
Johnny
and his parents also had a deal that he would have to start paying his own
bills after college. The challenge in
paying the bills was that in addition to jobs in his field having dried up jobs
were hard to get period. Many retail
stores and corporations that were not hiring.
If he had been able to go back to his hometown, he would have likely
been able to get a job with someone his parents knew and lived at home.
What
he had to settle for was able to get a number of temporary jobs working in
warehouses that paid slightly above minimum wage. He initially barely had enough money to pay
his rent, his share of the utilities and his car expenses. He eventually was able to get a school bus driving
job that started paying a consistent wage that made him feel a little more
comfortable.
Johnny
tried being social at church and it was difficult meeting people because it
would come up again and again that he was working as a school bus driver while
other people were working in their degree fields. It felt that all of the people who were
successful gathered together and left him out of their cliques.
It
was not helpful that the people he was living with were becoming
difficult. One guy who had just lost his
mother was either drunk or irritable and yelling at him for petty issues. It complicated matters that the guy yelling
at him was the owner of the house and was constantly talking about his needing
to sell the house and that he did not know how much longer Johnny could live
there. He was getting it from all sides and it was
heading into looking like a crisis on all sides.
Johnny was very much beside himself and he had
to make some decisions. The direction he
wanted to go in life had dead-ended. He was not finding jobs in his college
major and he was not good jobs period. He was barely making it financially and
it felt like he was at risk of losing the place he could barely afford. Johnny
also felt socially and emotionally isolated.
Johnny
had to admit that he was in a wilderness.
The road he had been going on dead-ended and he had no idea where he
could go. It was a miserable place where
he was at and he and he had no idea how he could get out of it. Johnny had to cry privately about it because
it was a painful reality to accept.
After
Johnny cried, he had to make some decisions and he had to gather his bearings.
He had to figure out where he was going to direct his energies to feel stable.
He sat down in a library outside of the house where it was quiet and made lists
of what mattered to him, what was necessary in the here and now. He made a plan and strategy in the quiet of
the library to cope with the lousy living situation and to begin to map out the
future.
Johnny’s
plan and strategy included spending as much time outside of the house as he
could to detach from the grouchy roommate, and one of those places was the
library. In other situations, Johnny probably would have told the guy to buzz
off, but it just felt right in this situation to ignore, placate and appease
him because pride did not pay the rent.
Besides
the money for the rent, Johnny took inventory on how he was going to try and
get ahead on the money. He worked out a
budget with a plan to get his credit cards paid off, eat cheap but nutritious and
mostly canned food from one of the discount grocery store and to buy any
clothes from the charity thrift stores.
There
were a variety of so-called job opportunities that turned out to be pyramid
schemes. It was both amazing and annoying
that several people he knew and did not previously know, approach him and in
their second conversation, they pitched Johnny to participate in the very same
pyramid. Johnny listened to them, but it
required an investment that he could not afford, and it required recruiting all
his friends, and none of them had the money either.
Johnny
also tried a sales job on the side of being a bus driver, but it was a poor
situation. Many people argued over account
theft and the product was proving to be a luxury that not many people were
buying in a recession. Furthermore,
Johnny felt dirty working in the setting because people were being unethical in
lying to close sales and offering deals that were actually against corporate
rules. This particular job especially
made Johnny feel like he was in the wilderness because it was very difficult
and confusing and made him face his values and what was right and wrong.
Johnny’s
wait in the wilderness was already taking too long after the first week. With
each rejection letter and each door that did not open he felt frustrated and worried
more and more that he was going to be stuck in the wilderness forever. The thoughts of worry in addition to his
continued embarrassment compounded his anxiety that kept him up at night and hindered
his sleep.
Since
he was in the library a few times per week, he skimmed through some self-help
books on anxiety and what it took to reduce it.
He concluded that he had to make his life more than dodging the bitter
and irritable roommate who also owned the house and looking for jobs that were
not coming his way. As a result, Johnny made
sure he went to church every week to think about spiritual matters and he volunteered
at a charity for homeless people.
The
sense of vulnerability did not leave him and he struggled with feeling like
poser as he went to church and then to the charity, but being in those places opened
his eyes to the larger picture of the world and got him thinking about other matters.
He was able to take a break at times from thinking about his own problems and
he felt valued at times by other people as to what he could do. His exercise in faith at church did not perfectly
solve his anxiety, but he was not feeling alone. He realized that he usually
felt better or at least worse when he was in those places because he was just
being “Johnny,” and not Johnny, the embarrassed guy who got a college degree
that seemed worthless.
As
the months went by and there was little response from potential employers in
his career field, he realized that he may have to give up his degree program
because it was proving to be a dead-end and he could not put his life on
hold. He entertained the idea that he
might have to give up the dream of working in his creative field and get about
the business of earning a living that would lead to his self-sufficiency and at
least get him his own apartment where he did not have to put up with the
irritable guy who owned the house.
Johnny started researching other job fields
and potential career opportunities while in the library. He had read an article that many people did
not work in their major field, and he decided with tears and grief that he was
going to join that group. It was a matter of trial and error in figuring out
which career field he could work in? He
filled out all kinds of online job applications and signed up for civil service
tests. He kept a list of what he was
trying and where he was going.
Despite
the efforts, it was still a hard routine for Johnny as all the while he wanted something
better but continued to both look and wait for a way out of the wilderness. Despite his efforts to stay busy and
occupied, his helplessness to do anything further to improve his situation was
still painful and frustrating at times. The
room was cold and he endured getting up at 4:30 every morning to go drive the
bus in the dead of winter in a quiet manner so as not to disturb the owner of
the house. He tried to be as creative as
possible with the food he could afford especially because he could not afford
to eat at restaurants. Johnny silently cried to God frequently on Sunday
mornings in church that life sucked and he prayed for deliverance from the situation.
Eventually,
Johnny got an opportunity in the form of a job offer with state government. The offer came after the sixth civil service
test he took for a clerical job in the same city. It was not what he went to school for, but it
was a livable wage and he was soon able to save his money for his rent deposits
and his first apartment of his own. He worked hard through his probationary
period and was ready to move on and out of the house. It was not perfect, but was a better
direction in his life that offered stability, self-sufficiency, some hope of career
advancement and it felt like he was out of the wilderness, and Johnny began to
build himself a base of stability based on all of the lessons he learned while
in the wilderness.
Conclusion
This
chapter explored the challenge of being okay when you are in the midst of the
wilderness of life where your life feels like it has come to a dead end and you
lack the direction where to go next.
When we are in wildernesses, we are unsure what we are waiting for, but we
feel like we are lost and do not have a direction but we definitely do not like
where we are.
Being
okay in the wilderness requires getting one’s bearings. Getting bearings involves admitting the
reality of a wilderness and the taking stock of the situation and resources
both available and in your possession.
We take stock by asking what is necessary now and what matters now. Getting
one’s bearing in a wilderness is not a clean and easy process because reality
is messy and what we focused on may not be what is actually needed.
After
we get our bearing, we find that we are waiting to get out of the wilderness.
With waiting we are physically parked while mentally and emotionally we yearn
to be elsewhere. When we are waiting, we
are not the ones in power or control; we are dependent on others who do or do
not know to make decisions, and they do not necessarily have our interests or
our emotional distress in mind. Waiting
is an anxious and frustrating state of being and we express that anxiety by
worry.
Worry
is that form of anxiety where we continue to dwell on a problem that we cannot
solve. Continued worry can escalate into panic, cause some physical problems
and descend a person into lower self-esteem and loss of one’s bearing. While worry is a very human action, it can be
managed by looking it as a choice and choosing to occupy our mind with
different thoughts and getting into different activities.
Some
people may be stuck in the wilderness because they are choosing to continue a
pursuit of a dream that is actually a pursuit of a dead-end. It is extremely difficult to give up dreams
when a person has centered their lives and reputation on their pursuit. However,
there is a point where the cost of the pursuit of dream is a wilderness. Some
people stay in the wilderness over being unable to grieve, being stuck in grief,
or refusing to grieve the loss of the dream.
Wildernesses
end to a new beginning. The new beginning is not always spectacular or
fantastic, but it is a direction that both feels like an escape and a direction
that has some promise.
Wildernesses
can teach us very deep and meaningful life-long lessons about ourselves and our
values. The fine print is that the lessons are deeply painful. However, through the pain we discover our
resilience and our strength, and we hopefully gain wisdom as to how we pursue
our futures.
The
wildernesses of life are a reality for many people. They have the potential to be destructive phenomena,
but they can be worked through when one starts by working to be okay.
