Sometimes we often take on the unbearable burden of various tasks and responsibilities. Overcoming the next difficulties, sometimes it is useful to stop and ask yourself: is this what I really want? Am I automatically running from the past, afraid to stop? Or am I still walking confidently in the direction of the future?
Once, in the company of friends, I talked aloud about my movements in life. I grew up in a provincial Ural city and had all the opportunities to make a medical and administrative career and arrange life, as they say, on a level.
But no, I was drawn to explore the capital. I went nowhere — no housing, no work, no connections. It took a lot of effort to get used to the new place. It would seem that he has reached a plateau, so use what you have acquired, eat the fruits, increase your achievements. But here again I find myself mastering a world unfamiliar to me — a new country, and as if starting to build life anew.
What a strange hobby to find difficulties for yourself in order to overcome them? Friends then asked with a smile: “And then? Moon? Mars?» And I thought: what is the difference between the desire to develop and the continuous pursuit of achievements, the need to prove to yourself all your life that you are worth something?
Neurophysiologists have shown that the desire for a new, previously unknown, is inherent in us by nature. In a population of rats, for example, there are always “crazy” individuals who, from a settled and safe space, strive to get into a new unexplored room, even if it is along a brightly lit and electric bridge. So, the constant race for new achievements is predetermined by nature itself?
“Every person has a hole the size of God in their soul, and everyone fills it as best they can”
One eminent director said that after filming is completed, he feels lost, as if he ceases to live. Only with the advent of a new film does he regain the ability to feel the pulsation of life, its taste. And my friend, who has earned a decent fortune, proudly calls himself a workaholic: in the short periods of calm between projects, he does not know what to do with himself.
I believe that in the absence of an occupation that absorbs all our attention and strength, we are left alone with ourselves. Perhaps one on one with his canned pain, unlived feelings, unsatisfied needs and a lack of understanding of the meaning of his own life. Jean-Paul Sartre said on this occasion: «Every person has a hole the size of God in his soul, and everyone fills it as best he can.»
What will make it possible to distinguish flight from oneself under the guise of “achievement”, on the one hand, and interest in the new, the desire to develop, on the other? I think self-awareness after the finish flag. If I did what comes from my inner needs and values, then a feeling of fullness and harmony comes. If, shortly after reaching what I was looking for, a gray cloud of lostness covers me, then the path that I have traveled was only a means of not meeting myself.
Returning to my friends’ joking question about my next destination, I think about where I’ve come from doing Gestalt therapy. It seems that now I am not trying to skip through today in order to quickly reach a “bright tomorrow”. And with all the complexity of adapting to a new country, I manage to be “here and now”, living every day.
Hmm, here’s a tricky question: when I don’t have to accept challenges and overcome difficulties, how will I feel, having settled down and settled down? Will I be just as filled and satisfied with every day I live? Well, we’ll come back to this conversation in a couple of years …