Like many people during this extraordinary time in modern human history, I am experiencing a general feeling of discontent. I am more fortunate than most because I am employed and currently committed to supporting our frail elderly. The work is satisfying and provides me purpose. When I wake up in the morning, I’m filled with the energy of one who is faithful to a cause, and I have no complaint working on my assigned mission.
In the last year, I’ve put my free time to good use. I completed the free, on-line, 12-module Indigenous Canada course through the University of Alberta. I completed Google’s Search Inside Yourself (SIY) course. I read eighty non-fiction books. I hiked many of the trails and climbed most of the easily accessible peaks in the Okanagan Valley. I reduced my alcohol consumption considerably, replacing my South Okanagan wine habit with an herbal tea routine, which provides me the same soothing feeling, and saves me money to boot. I broke my personal record for consecutive push ups (managed 111 in a row) and might have done better had I not broken three ribs in a fall while hiking. And I’ve been working on improving my daily habits: flossing, meditating, journaling, fine-tuning my morning and bedtime routines, and experiencing nature in some way, rain or shine. On the surface of it, life seems pretty good. I’m fitter and more energetic than I’ve been in a long time, I have periods of contentment (I can mostly thank meditation for that), and I have more happy days than not. I have nothing, really, to complain about.
And yet, though my life is fulfilling, it doesn’t seem to be fulfilling enough.
To say this out loud, let alone even think it, seems sacrilege. Who am I to complain about discontent when all of my necessities of life are being met, while many people in the world, even some close friends, are suffering from unemployment and other, more pressing, problems such as putting food on the table, paying their mortgages, and trying to hold their family units together? Who am I to grumble when I have so much?
I can only answer these questions by looking back at my own life experience. I also have suffered pain from the loss of loved ones. I also have suffered anxiety from unemployment. I’ve also had times as a young man when I was so broke I had to live off scraps for weeks or nothing at all for days at a time. Granted, I’ve never been truly destitute like some of the people I’ve seen in my travels, but I’ve certainly sometimes wondered when I would be able to enjoy a meal again.
But I always knew in those seemingly desperate times that the crisis would pass, that the experience would make me stronger and more resilient, and that a better life was ahead. What happens, though, when one gets to that future better life, is that the problems don’t disappear; they just change in scope. As Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, mentioned in a TED Talk, he has met many of the financially wealthiest people in the world, and even they aren’t happy all the time.
I’m certainly not the first to ask these questions, but I’ve been asking them more frequently over the past six months, which is concerning.
Is this all there is? What else is there?
I’m in my sixties now, and I often think about the scene in the movie Gladiator, when Marcus Aurelius (played by Richard Harris) is speaking to the General (played by Russell Crowe): “I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life.”
I’m not dying myself, at least not imminently. And if I knew I were to die today, I suspect that I would feel satisfied that I had contributed to a better world through my work in the military serving Canada, in my work in health care serving vulnerable populations, and, through my example, inspiring a few young people to achieve their higher potential. But since I’m not on my death bed yet, I feel that there is still more to do. Things that might contribute to my greater life satisfaction. And that might inspire even more people to greater achievement and life satisfaction.
I spent some time last weekend journaling, noting those times in my life when I was happiest. There were lots of happy moments to be sure – fatherhood alone accounts for a multitude of joyful moments and laughter – but there was no consistency to the ups and downs. I sometimes suffered days of frustration and unhappiness while doing something enjoyable, such as hiking or hanging out with friends. Likewise, there were always some happy days even when I was working on tasks I hated.
What I was really looking for were those times in my life when I was fully content, when I was frequently filled with energy, and when I was “in the zone”, lost in what the Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes in his seminal work as “Flow”. When was I doing something over a long period when I was so lost in my thoughts and activities that my concept of time vanished and I often forgot to eat a meal? When were those times that I was so fully absorbed that when I came out of my energized mental state, I had a long-lasting feeling of satisfaction and contentment?
I discovered that I was most content when I was working on a long-term meaningful project. Or when I was on an important mission. Or when I was on a challenging personal quest. Completing simultaneous undergraduate degrees; striving to complete my master’s degree with a 4.0 GPA; walking across Canada; hiking the Bruce Trail; walking the lengths of six Camino pilgrimages in Spain and France; completing a pilgrimage to the temples of Apollo and Athena in Delphi, Greece; reading 500 non-fiction books in five years; climbing 55 mountains in 55 days in the Canadian Rockies to celebrate my 55th birthday; and even trying to complete all of the hikes in a given guide book: these were the types of things I did that have provided me with long-term satisfaction and contentment. These were the things that really jazzed me! It was while completing those quests that I felt most fully ALIVE!
General world travel, which I thought would bring me happiness, was certainly interesting, educational, and caused me to meet lots of fascinating people. But for satisfaction and contentment, world travel was no more fulfilling than staying at home, reading a book, and playing bridge every week with my close friends. But a travel quest?! Now that was something far more gratifying. When I think of the fascinating people I met in my travels who have become long-term friends, I realize it’s the ones I met while I was on a travel quest. They either supported my quest in some way, or they were simultaneously completing the same quest. Travel quests, I realize, are far more meaningful to me than touristy world travel jaunts. For example, hiking the Camino de Santiago has provided me with greater happiness utility than, say, seeing the sights in Malta or Porto.
I wonder, then, if a personal quest might be therapy for the discontent I’m experiencing in what looks to be an already pretty darned good life.
It’s time to bring more purpose and meaning into my life. It’s time to wake up. What I need to do next is becoming clear.
It’s time to go on another personal quest.
Let the brainstorming and planning begin!