Asking What Matters…Again

Photo by Lee Scott on Unsplash

It is Happy Hour and we are laughing with two other couples when the conversation turns to existential questions. We have all left the religions of our childhood and are discussing the probability of a God out there.

I pick up an old thread with one of our friends in which he and I distinguished his paradigm, skeptical agnostic, from mine, hopeful agnostic. I want something bigger than me to be out there, a universal being that put all the good in this world together. The ocean and trees and my endocrine system.

It is a gift to talk so openly about questions like “what’s the point of it all” over martinis on a Friday night.

I’m slowly coming to embrace these existential questions as a regular part of my experience, like my heartbeat or breathing air. It’s better this way, to simply accept their daily presence in my life rather than the anguished wrestling I often experience.

Accepting also means managing the way these questions can fuel anxiety, moving it throughout my body. These are the moments when I wish the questioning would take a break, go somewhere else, and not direct my thoughts in such an all-encompassing way. These are the moments when I long for the certainty I once embraced.

I like certainty. It’s stable.

This ongoing existential crisis plays like a continuous loop in my head asking variations on the themes, “What Matters?” and “What’s the Point?”

It has only driven me to the edge of despair a few times, maybe more than a few, when the black hole of insufficient answers made me question getting out of bed ever again. But generally, I get up and take this familiar companion with me, like plaque or cellulite. The existential crisis is something I bring along when I am simply getting on with my day.

For years, I would answer this question from a place of faith. Specifically the Christian faith. The religion of my ancestors and family. It served as a familiar receptacle to put my questions. The Book provided answers. Sometimes I wondered about those answers but I was more thankful for the relief.

But time and humans and my questions began to erode the foundation I thought was so strong. I was familiar with the parable of one man building a house on stone and one on sand, the structure on sand being a precarious situation. I thought I rested on stone. I didn’t. And it took time to recognize this.

My house of beliefs didn’t wash away in the first storm but after several seasons of harsh weather that chipped away at the building until I looked up one day and there was nothing left to shelter me. It was as if all the illusions had washed away, the blinders gone, and I was standing alone, naked with only my thoughts to wear.

Some of the chipping away resulted from the mounting agitation that I simply couldn’t get this religion right. There was always more to do, more to be. Sit in the front seats of the sanctuary and not in the back, announced one leader. Go to this place to help people and not that one announced another. This or that is wrong. You are wrong. God knows you’re wrong. These were the messages that played over and over and over until I decided it was time to take my wrong self and search for another oasis.

But in leaving, I left answers to the questions I have carried for much of my life. The questions of the ages.

Why are we here?

What is the point of it all?

Does it all just end when we stop breathing?

I generally keep the true extent of this questioning to myself because it seems to spread anxiety in others. My questions can fuel a need to quickly answer the questions for me and get me out of this dilemma. Or perhaps that is my projection. I know many people around me are satisfied with the answers they have to these questions and I fear that if I begin to discuss them, they will look at me with confusion or concern or, god forbid, pity.

Once, when I ventured out with this load and shared it, I received another Christian answer. This is a “dark night of the soul,” and it often feels dark; the implication being that eventually light will be brought into the darkness. The Light. Pointing back to just one answer. I would love some light. But the old ways of illumination don’t make sense to me anymore.

Once again, the pressure in my chest increases. Uncertainty abounds.

And it’s this uncertainty that has become my fellow journeywoman. I am learning to take her in stride when she hurls a barrage of questions at me while I drink my first cup of coffee. “What matters?!” she yells.

My attempts at pacifying her voice begin with taking the day in smaller pieces. I acknowledge her presence and the truth that a shower will feel good. Eating certain foods for breakfast will give me energy for whatever the day holds and keep my joints from inflaming later in the afternoon. Living with a little less joint pain matters, it helps at least.

I have two young people in my care whom I love so much that I am motivated to provide them with good things. That’s the point today. To care for them and contain just a bit of my existential crisis from them for they are not burdened by these questions right now, my boys who are more concerned with the surf report and Fortnite victories.

The air is cool and I hear a bird chirping in my backyard. There is the gentle trickle of our fountain that helps relieve the anxiety-fueled sensations in my stomach. That matters. Writing to get some of this out of my body helps.

And on the days when it becomes a little too difficult to carry the questions on my own, I call my friends for Happy Hour, friends who understand these questions. We meet for drinks and consider the vastness of the universe.

We sit together in the uncertainty.