Posted by Elizabeth

Some days I sit down to write a blog post and I know exactly what I’m going to say.  Other days the well is dry.  But on days like today my head is swimming with topics, and I struggle to pick just the right one.  I could write about Jeannette Walls’ Half Broke Horses, which I finished late last night, offering plenty of lessons and wisdom about living a life in pencil.  I could write about my new friend Evelyn and our unusual bilingual relationship.  I could write about our do-it-yourself bathroom remodel project, or Malcolm Gladwells’ Blink, or the fact that life is trying to teach me a lesson about patience these days.  I think all of these would make fine topics – in fact, you might see some of them in the coming weeks – but what’s really tugging at my attention today is this:

Existential crises.

If you know me, you know I talk a lot about existential crises.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I invented the term – I’m sure it came from someone in the existential school of thought — but I don’t recall where I heard it and I use the phrase a great deal, so I’m claiming it as my own for the purposes of this post.  What is an existential crisis, and how does it differ from your run-of-the-mill crisis?  You know you’re in the midst of an existential crisis when you wake up one day and begin asking yourself Life’s Big Questions.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose?  WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Unlike your everyday crisis, you probably find that your life looks completely fine from the outside looking in.  Whereas most ordinary crises are propelled from external sources – you lose a job, a house, a relationship – existential crises are purely internal; this is what makes them so hard to pinpoint and easy to dismiss.  Everything looks fine, but nothing feels fine.  But trust me when I say that an existential crisis is just as serious as any other kind.

One of my favorite pastimes is to go around and diagnose my friends with an existential crisis.  Because I have faced my fair share of existential crises, I consider myself uniquely qualified to hand out these proclamations.  Just a few weeks ago, my friend, Emily, admitted that she was casting about aimlessly, wondering what life project she should tackle next.  I told her without hesitation that she was clearly in the midst of an existential crisis.  She reported that the diagnosis made her feel better because “it made my slothy blahs sound more intelligent. “  And that’s just the thing:  it’s easy to mistake an existential crisis for a lack of motivation.  And what’s the answer, at least in our culture, to inertia and uncertainty?  We should do something!

It’s then that we get into the sticky wicket of working ourselves through an existential crisis.  Is the answer to do something or to do nothing?  If we choose the former, how do we go about putting the answers to such monumental questions into action?  If we choose the latter, how do we keep the process moving forward without succumbing to a lifetime of sitting in a wingback chair in a velvet smoking jacket, just thinking? Because we are a culture that tends to value tangible results, productivity, and active doing, I think most of us tackle our existential crises by springing to action.  We immediately formulate a plan, something that will provide a quick answer, and then set about accomplishing it.  But if we haven’t taken the proper time and rest to formulate that plan, to let the existential ground lie fallow for a time, we often find ourselves weeks, months, or even years down the road asking the same questions.

There’s a lot of benefit to doing nothing – at least for awhile – because most of us rarely take the time to do so.  It’s difficult and uncomfortable to sit with our existential problems, waiting for answers to emerge, especially if we’re “doers” by nature.  We might feel as if we’re wasting precious time; we might feel lazy; we might wonder if this “doing nothing” is actually accomplishing anything.  Usually it is, but like the existential crisis itself, the forward movement is often imperceptibly small, invisible to the naked eye, and completely internal.  If we can’t see change happening, we might wonder if anything is really changing.  This approach takes a great deal of trust.  And sometimes it’s not always the answer.  Sometimes, in our effort to do nothing, we end up lying down and never getting back up again.

The answer, I think, is to make doing “nothing” an active process.  By its very definition it’s easy to reduce “doing nothing” to sitting on your duff waiting for life to happen and the answers to emerge.  This brand of “doing nothing” rarely works (unless you are “existentially tired”*, in which case sitting on your duff for a good, long while might be just the cure).  Instead, if we approach the act of doing nothing as an exploratory process, in which we are not manically seeking The Next Plan but inspiration, “doing nothing” can quickly feel like we’re “doing something.”  There are all sorts of ways we can actively explore our world without compulsively searching for plans, answers, and concrete action.  For example, Emily sat down to an inspiring dinner with a new friend, who helped stoke her creative fires without hammering out The Next Big Thing.  Why does this work?  Because the aim of this action is exploratory, rather than producing tangible outcomes, and there’s nothing more exciting that exploration at a time like this.

When you find yourself in the midst of an existential crisis, I am a proponent of doing what you have energy for, what excites you, what piques your curiosity, because I truly believe the answers are contained somewhere within those ideas.  It’s a great time to broaden your social circle, to invite new ideas into your life.  If you have the energy to do so, it’s a great time to say “yes” to things; you never know what new opportunities you never could have predicted are waiting on the horizon.

*Existential crises are often related to being “existentially tired” – a term I’m pretty sure I did invent – wherein you are not physically but emotionally exhausted.

Do you fall more into the “do nothing” or “do something” camp when you find yourself at a cross-roads?  What techniques have you found particularly useful when tackling your own existential crises?