If you’re not creating, you’re dying

Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash

This has been a pretty hard year. Finances. Family in the hospital. Starting school again. And all the other ups and downs that come with waking up every day and deciding to do something. Why get up? Why try? I roll the boulder up and it rolls back down. And as I watch it descend, I ask myself: Why continue if there’s no point and success isn’t even guaranteed? It’s that tricky question that plagues the depressed, the dejected and perhaps all of us. What’s the point?

Often, when I get to this point, I feel like a fool, an idiot. I have no idea what I’m doing. This crawling in the dark towards some sort of certainty or salvation, fumbling about and sometimes getting stuck…is this all there is to look forward to? Just as soon as I catch a glimpse of myself, the fog drifts in and I am once again lost. Who am I? And what do I do? And where the hell am I?

I suppose this is why you pay attention to your breath when you meditate. Yes, my breath tells me little. It gives me no information as it pertains to my relationships, the certainty of the future, the meaningless pain of my past. But it does clue me in on one thing. It tells me that I’m alive. I’m breathing. And I am here, whatever here is.

And what do I do while I’m here? I feel like an idiot just asking that question. Everyone around me is in a great big buzz, moving from A to B…