So over a beer the other day with Alex, I confessed to him
that I don’t think I’ve ever had an existential crisis. My take on what that heavy term “existential
crisis” means a crisis that shakes you to the core – one that is about
something more substantial than a job, or a career, or even suffering within
the ordinary realm. I mean an event or
situation that challenges all you’ve thought about the world. Yup, after I define it, I’m convinced that
I’ve never really been there. This
bothers me not so much because I’ve avoided a crisis, but because it exposes my
insecurities that that I’m not much of an existential thinker. I prefer to talk about the presidential
election, or a movie I saw, or how my day is going. In other words, the phrase “what’s this all
mean?” has never left my lips, and only
entered my head when it has been uttered by someone else.
I say this because in my conversations with the others who
are contemplating forming an intentional living community together, it seems
like everyone else has an existential viewpoint to offer. And since things are a bit stressful right
now with the potential of the community (long story – so many uncertainties),
this stress appears to be working out in others as various existential
crises. I'm not mourning my lack of such a crisis because I'm missing out on regularly feeling pretty shi**y about the world. I guess I am lamenting this absence
because it reflects how I don’t have a very existential view of the world at
all. As I told Alex, I view time mostly
in terms of things to get done, and people to spend time with, and books to
read, and hobbies to try. I enjoy
walking with people through life, through the tough stuff and the good stuff,
loving and supporting each other, but in a way that is very grounded on the
earth. I can’t tell you I think a lot
about the nature of God, or the existence of evil (or, for that matter, the
existence of good), or questioning the meaning of it all. I mostly just do the dishes.
But when I’m thinking about joining a community, while also feeling
like I’m a person who thinks mostly about “superficial” things, it makes me
unsure about what I have to offer to the group.
The
best I may have to offer the house could be to go grocery shopping and take one
of the kids along, I said to Alex, who shared with me his own insecurities
about what he can contribute to the group.
He rightly observed that likely others may have similar insecurities
about the negative junk they may carry into the house as well as the doubts
about what they have to give. And now,
writing about it, I feel like all I have to offer to this community, to this
universe, is who I am, what I think, how I feel, and what I can do for all the
souls I encounter. I can choose to view
myself as not lacking anything, but as only myself, maybe one who is most like myself
through doing things instead of
thinking about things.
If I can’t offer wisdom or deep questions or theological
conversations or knowing what Peter Rollins would say to any given thought,
then I guess I will go to the store, and weed the garden, and sit with one of
the children, and take the dog for a walk, and wipe fingerprints off the glass,
offering only myself, my whole self, to these people. No less, and no more.
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