The 1 Thing Everyone Around Me is Searching For
And no one seems to have.
And no one seems to have.
It’s a strange time to be unemployed.
On the one hand, I would love money and a stable form of health insurance. And on the other, no one has really judged me for being unemployed for a year because of the panorama; I’ve also been so content just focusing on painting and writing that I hope I don’t have to go back into the workforce again.
In fact, I’ve been so content with this exploratory period of my life and have been so focused on creation and learning that many people have reached out to me as if I’m a keeper of a secret that they’ve been waiting for. Since I haven’t been in the workforce, people assume it is by choice and look at me and think, I’m the one that knows and understands their purpose. That I have that thing that we are always seeking.
One of the journeys I’ve taken since being unemployed is overhauling my relationship with self. I’ve done To Be Magnetic, worked with life coaches, explored different psychology and spiritual books, focused on my meditation routine, yoga, walking, etc. And I can happily say that this is the best my relationship with self has ever been, which I guess some people have noticed because one of the biggest questions I’ve received is, “how did you start?”
And like anyone that has explored these topics, I love talking about it. So I take them through my rock bottom, how I went to therapy first, then explored different avenues to find a process that worked for me, the whole sha-bang.
After offering my perspective, I would ask them why they want to get into this type of work and if there is anything I can help them discover. And I noticed a pattern with each person I spoke to. They would hear my journey and when I asked why they wanted to explore this, they would say “I just want clarity on what I’m meant to do.”
And I remember when I first started exploring these patterns in myself, I said the same exact thing.
Black Hole of Clarity
Clarity. Purpose. Truth.
I didn’t understand why people were coming to me as if I had the clarity that they were seeking until a few months ago in a coffee shop.
“He’s the American dream. He came over here, worked his ass off and now he’s a fucking millionaire. And he’s great. But, who is he going to take care of? His ex-wife and four kids. He isn’t going to care about me.
I don’t want to be a business transaction for a man.”
A woman with blood-red hair was sitting across from a man, as if in a coffee shop confessional. She was explaining her love life and how she didn’t want to feel like a second choice. The man sat there with a knowing grin on his face that said “yes, I have the answer.”
When he spoke it was clear that he only viewed women as annoying; a kind of man that seems to generalize the world. And I’m not generalizing him when I say this because he did actually say “all women are annoying.”
Everything seemed a stereotype to him. I saw this pair often in the coffee shop and noticed how he walked around smug with his knowing grin, convinced that his categorizations of others are always the end-all-be-all truths. When he said things like “all women are always competing over men,” he didn’t say it to start something, he just honestly believed it. Everything he says is the truth of reality. He seemed like a person of Victorian morality, spinning ideas of values as if they were written into the code of the Earth, speaking in absolutes. The kind of people that are not swayed by nuance. Living in a world of black and white with no room for anything but the preciousness of values.
At first, I was angry at how the man spoke. My inner moral warrior wanted to jump in and tell the woman to not listen to this man. I wanted desperately to show the man the expansiveness of the world; that his version of reality is just one option and that every truth is valid. I wanted to take him on a journey to show that to judge in black and white values is to put certain beings below others. That to make sweeping generalizations was hindering his happiness in this world.
And then I realized I was trying to do the same thing to him that he was doing to others.
And it was no wonder this woman was pouring out her soul to this man who speaks as if he is the judge of the world. A person that lives in black and white by specific morals, is intoxicating in a society that is so attached to the instant solutions given by Google and consumerism, yet so focused on hedging our opinions out of fear of being wrong. This man is a walking Google in the eyes of someone that feels uncertain; he is the answer.
When we aren’t sure of ourselves or the decisions we are making, we seek out anyone or any system to show us a truth. Whether that truth is found in science, the occult, personality tests, religion, philosophy, they all seek out to guide us to Truth. It doesn’t even have to be an accurate truth, a truth most aligned to us, and it almost never is. But, we seek out this non-Truth, which guides us into the black hole of clarity.
Where it Begins…
Everyone knows the John Lennon quote about telling the teacher he just wanted to be happy. We all felt something the first time we read that quote as if it unlocked a truth within us.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.”
And who knows if he actually said it. But, it still meant something, at least to me.
I could never give a clear answer. Which was especially difficult because we were asked to draw what we wanted to be. I drew a ballerina because that was the only thing I knew how to draw at that age; at least I thought I could draw it. It had nothing to do with the actual profession, I just liked to draw tutus.
The question lingered over my head as a rain cloud throughout my childhood and each year I was asked the same question, never being able to give a solid answer.
I would draw firefighters, ballerinas, Greek monsters, and one year I even told the class that I would be the president of the world. I was quickly told that that would be a dictatorship, but I assured the class that my rule would be kind.
And that question never went away; with all the accomplishments I set out for, all the things I had to do before I was considered successful, I continued to be asked what I wanted to be known as, as if I was not enough as myself.
From a young age, we are told to constantly identify with things outside of ourselves. What do we want to be when we grow up? What is the profession that we will identify with? How many kids will we have? The house? The car?
We are reassured that our identity and being sits outside in the items we acquire and the milestones we accomplish. This has aided in the creation of a culture that is so focused on finding a path that we create clarity paralysis; we cannot make a move until we have acquired that clarity. That’s what the black hole of clarity is.
We are a blank room. And we are told we need to open the door of clarity, purpose, truth, in order to be able to fill that room up. We run towards that door and it keeps moving farther away. We run faster and faster, always pursuing this door until we realize we are too late and the room is still blank. I later learned that the door will only reach us once we fill the room ourselves. You don’t receive clarity in order to build the room, you build the room in order to receive clarity.
Releasing Clarity Paralysis
It feels uncomfortable to sit with this, at least for me, because the entire structure is founded on the opposite. Companies need me to feel I am not enough in order to buy into their product telling me that I’ll be better with it; that I will find an answer or a missing piece of my puzzle by buying into whatever they have. This isn’t just products, it’s services, gurus, ideologies, they all show us something we feel is missing, that we cannot find within.
What has helped me release this foundation and step into a more fluid state was reading Joe Dispenza and learning about his theories through quantum physics. I won’t bore you with my horrible explanation of his work, but I highly recommend reading Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.
I also would journal asking myself the following questions every time I could feel myself wishing for an answer outside of myself:
What do I feel I need clarity on right now?
What am I looking to receive once I have clarity?
How is the absence of clarity affection my action forward?
Why do I think I need clarity in order to take a next step?
Is there a step I can take without needing clarity?
Is there aspects of this that I’m hoping for that I can immediately give to myself?
I don’t believe this is the answer to what you are seeking, and hey maybe you don’t want to take advice from someone that has been unemployed through this entire pandemic, but if this year and a half has taught me anything it is to surrender to my constant desire for clarity.
As someone who has always been about plans and taking action, stepping down from that idea that clarity is what will get me where I need to be has done wonders for my mental health and relationship to self. This isn’t to say clarity is wrong or not necessary, but maybe we don’t have to seek it as much as we think. Maybe in our willingness to explore by taking new actions, we allow ourselves to fill our blank room, and bring that door of clarity to us.
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