Existential Dread and its Relationship with Time.
Hitting a wall, slowly, but the impact consumes you entirely. First it’s the initial contact, when you hit the wall with such immense inertia that you don't feel the pain. All that work leading up to you slamming head first into that wall is what has lead you here, the climb up the steepest mountain, the run upon the most rugged trail. One trip, one slip, one misstep, and all the momentum you’ve built up is now lost. That is what it feels like to hit a wall. It is so hard to regain momentum, passion, the urge to begin again, when all that work has been decimated by one miscalculation, one uncontrolled variable.
After the collision, comes shock. Wow, you think to yourself as you regain consciousness, what the hell just happened? You feel like you’re drowning, like this force outside your control has just smothered you with a cosmic pillow filled with the mass of the universe. How can you overcome and defeat incomprehensible force? You try to swim to the surface, you struggle, but that’s natural since you’ve got the weight of the cosmos holding you down. You against time, the clock is ticking, this lack of control is representative of a loss of time. You cannot play tug-of-war with time, you cannot beg for forgiveness to the abstract nature of her ways. She moves like a river, but unlike water, time cannot be damed. This is the after shock, the acknowledgement of time lost, time stollen either by oneself or variables beyond ones control. Reaching out toward nothingness, the individual begins the realize that life outside of themselves shows no mercy, change and progress must come exclusively from the self.
The wall is an abstract concept that many individuals come in contact with, it’s the idea of feeling as though you are left with no other options. Struggling to see any paths outside the ones you’ve already walked down, the final move for an individual to make is to reflect. This is different from the after shock, as this represents both the acknowledgment that you have hit a wall, and why you’ve been put in this position. For myself, I noticed that I’ve felt a lack of passion in my life, a lack of purpose. How mundane is that? But life does not owe me purpose, nor do the people in my life or the work that I produce. I must give myself purpose, a reason to feel important or “a part of the greater whole.”
Purpose is a weird, very human concept. Why do we need to have a purpose, isn’t merely existing enough? I feel as though the idea of time plays a key role in our need for purpose, because time represents finality. When an individual hits a wall, or is stumped and struggling to find a “purpose,” this moment of uncertainty—in many ways—should be seen as an unbelievably beneficial thing. Taking a step back and reflecting on the current state of your life shows that you actually care about where you’re headed. Reflection, taking a brief pause and looking at your life from a Birdseye view, shows that there is a standard you wish to uphold but cannot figure out how. When hearing that someone is stuck or feels lost, we immediately find adjectives like “sad” or “depressed” to describe them when, rather, we should be viewing these individuals as the most inquisitive adventurers. They’ve become tired of the mundanity of their lives, and are searching for a greater purpose. These people are not depressed, they just understand that their life is not where it needs to be. They’ve butt heads with their own humanity one too many times, and the realization that something must change has finally dawned on them. This moment of clarity, of refocusing and rationalization is critical for embarking on the journey to self-discovery and self-empowerment.
I write this now because I have been face-to-face with this “wall” for quite some time. Maybe it is because my time in college is waning, or maybe it’s because I have no clue what I want to do with my life. Regardless of what the case may be, I have been looking at this wall and wondering how to get around it for far too much time. The indefinite state of uncertainty I find myself in also plays a big part in mental stagnation I’ve been experiencing. I lack consistency in my life, I live my life always playing the short game rather than looking toward the future. It is representative in my work, my relationships, my mentality, inconsistency is the biggest flaw I have. I know I have the tools to become a successful individual, and I prove this to myself via my work and attitude, but it is never a long-lasting shift in my mentality. This is why I brought up momentum in the beginning of this piece, once I lose that urge or force propelling me forward, I struggle to regain it.
I know so many people deal with this, and that is why I think it is so important to talk about. College students and other people my age look at the outer-world and observe the chaos and uncertainty of life beyond the collegiate bubble. It is frightening, it’s unknown, and it is lurking just around the corner. Adulthood creeps up quicker than anticipated, but everyone said it would. People that know exactly what they want don’t experience the anxiety of feeling lost, but they do experience the feeling of competition and of fearing failure. The individuals who are lost, struggling to figure out what they want to do with their lives, experience the anxiety that comes with existential dread. What will I do when I have to leave the comfort and structure of college? How will I make money in my field? Will I enjoy what I do? That is horribly stressful, and if you do not have a support system to help bolster whatever decision you end up making, you are in an even deeper pit of anxiety.
The question of what the future holds is exclusive to the human experience, and it is representative of our inability to leave the events as they ought to be. The importance of feeling lost, unsure, or even “hitting a wall,” is that it acts as a mirror for what our current situation is, and lays all the cards on the table. You are presented with all these options, whether they are real or not, and uncertainty acts as the vehicle for change and reevaluation. Rather than looking at being in limbo as a negative, see it as a time where you can change the way you’ve been engaging with life, and with time. Allow time to engulf you, and work with her as she passes you by. The action that makes our metaphorical wall impenetrable is our stubbornness toward the fluidity of time. Embrace the unknown, and learn to coexist with time.