Fuck, I'm Stuck in the Tree: Perceived Satisfaction and Escapism

 “Practice feeling longing without the expectation of satisfaction.”.  This is a phrase I’d written on a sticky note, taking note of the expression said in a podcast I listened to a few weeks ago.

Earlier this week I happened upon the sticky note when I was tidying my desk, no longer sure of the context in which it was said. It’s been in my mind since. I wish I could tell you where exactly it came from, but, like I said, this was weeks ago. If I ever remember its source, I’ll be sure to update you.

A lot of what I talk about on here involves the examination of suffering, which is really just an overly dramatic way of saying I’m curious about our wide spectrum of emotions and the way we as people foster meaning. So yeah, I’ve been thinking about this idea that longing is an expression of suffering, both of which would be synonymous with desire in its verb form, desiring.

I’m sure by now some of you are probably like ‘jeez girl you’re really out to get this thing called desire’, but I hope I’m not coming off antagonistic. That isn’t my intention. Instead, my intention is to sift out the root of self-inflicted emotional/psychological pain because I’m personally (as many are) quite good at inflicting it.

I call this type of pain the ‘cherry on top’ because it anoints very real problems with a sense of ‘completion’. In other words, our self-inflicted suffering is just a way of solidifying (and potentially amplifying) the very real external problems we face (or have faced historically) and rendering them in the internal world in a process of sense-making.

 In some ways, suffering is invented. Usually, it is us who craft it. We curate narratives which confirm our fears and our suspicions because our minds view them as protective. How kind of the mind to hold onto what it thinks will keep us safe.

But a lot of the time these behaviours and narratives are maladaptive, as I’ve spoken in extreme detail about, and I won’t go into much further in this essay. However, I will say this: our suffering is a layer of internal turbulence formed through resistance and it can lead to pain. My therapist told me that pain and suffering are different, I’ve been thinking about that a lot too.

 I want this distinction to be clear. Pain is a response to discomfort, injury, harm and can occur outside of suffering. Suffering is distress, and in the context of these types of conversations, the word refers to this antagonism of the present moment, it is a type of pain. This is not me saying that we make up our pain, but instead that we contribute to our perceived sense of pain through emotional and cognitive patterns that in general, tend to be a bit of a buzzkill. Suffering.

So, back to the longing thing. We’ve already said that desire is resistance because it has us wanting to alter the present reality in ways that transcend the scope of our abilities at that time. Longing is the word we use to describe the sensation of wanting something we don’t have. It’s pretty much textbook desire. We want better for ourselves. Is that so bad?

 Well, as I’ve said before, it’s not always, but we must admit that our longing can be harmful. This isn’t an essay about what longing is though. Instead, it’s an essay about how we respond to it.

 It’s inevitable that we will want things, that we’ll face the present moment and say fuck this and hope to move forward. But what if I don’t? What if despite the hard work, the late nights, the emotional efforts, I am not met with the change I’m longing for? What if I meet failure after failure and that’s all I get?

 Well, typically my response is rooted in the firm sense that I know what I want, and I have a general direction that I am chipping away at. I tell myself in times of doubt that it will all be worth it, that I’ll get there eventually.

 This isn’t to say that I won’t, but as I live in this seemingly transitory stage of my life I wonder about this sticky note. Practice longing without the expectation of satisfaction. I don’t do that, and worse, I rely on the opposite to cope.

 So, what if I’m met with that desire that says, “Hey you want these things and you don’t have them” and instead of saying “it’s coming”, I assume nothing at all. What if I show up anyways?

 It’s funny because I think most people in my life view me as an optimist, and I frequently teeter the line of delusion and a strong sense of trust in the eventual outcome. But trust is a shifty thing, isn’t it? Inevitably, trust will wane, we become discouraged. How do we approach this momentary lapse in faith?

I think the speaker responsible for the quote would say we must explore the potential of receiving zero gratification. I can see how this topic can be a bit uncomfortable, like what do you mean I have to imagine my dreams not coming true, or that this effort I’m putting in might be wasted?

Well, I guess I would tell you that in all my reflections on this, I’ve come to the same conclusions; that as of right now I’m not particularly interested in trading my current embodiment to live loosely in a vision of a potential later. To be here right now, to honour the life I am actively living, I have to let go of that vision. Fuck.

If my dreams don’t come true, I’ll never know that until I die; ‘never’ only really begins there. If that’s the case, so be it. I just don’t want to be so far away from right now anymore.

This thought has me realizing that I have been a guest to the present, not an inhabitant. I check in, I wander around for a bit and then when things are difficult or uncomfortable, I head back into the mindset of “don’t worry it’ll happen”. I have buried my head in the dirt, waiting to be called back up when things look the way I want them to. But if it doesn’t, what a shame it would be to have traded all of this.

The other piece of this is the wasted time narrative. But I think if we are only participating in an act or behaviour for an eventual outcome, we might have bigger fish to fry. If I got up every day and I hated everything I did but I had a feeling it would maybe work out, I think I’m bargaining a lot of time for a mysterious untouchable maybe. Not sure that’s a fair trade. I have to find the joy here.

Look, this isn’t to say never do anything you don’t want to do or never do anything at all but ask yourself if you are genuinely abandoning the discomfort of your present reality with the hope of one day obtaining the utopia that you don’t have right now. Think about proportionality for a second.

Is working 70 hours a week for a job that should be (and could be) paying you more, worth the trade of time spent with loved ones, nature, the self? What is the cost? What is the trade?

Now certainly I’m not referring to situations outside of our control. Often, we have to participate in our lives in ways that are undesirable or that require compromise. Neither of these things are the true issue. Instead, the problem arises when our drive and participation in a vision is elective; it is when we opt for increased distance from the present. A good way of telling if you are doing this is by isolating the motivation. Are my actions fuelled by dissatisfaction? More importantly (and far more likely), are my actions motivated by fear?

A part of me has realized how much of a crutch hope has become, and how in some ways, I’ve weaponized hope into a vessel that denies me much of my present moment. I have used hope and this ambition to make space between me and my sadness, to separate me from my fear, and from truly coping with my circumstances.

Generally, I have used the fire under my ass to push myself further in life, and often this wasn’t a choice. This year has been difficult in ways I never thought I’d have to deal with. But I think I’ve been living in the fear, alchemizing it into something that looks productive so that I don’t have to admit that internally, there is a different story. Similarly, no one can tell, even if all the signs have been there for me. This is no mistake, even if it is subconscious. Suffering demands replication and pattern.

So, I haven’t allowed myself to be sad, or to really sit with the year I have had behind me. I’ve denied myself resolve by housing myself in an invented sense of refuge that is actually escapist.

I’ve always been a dreamer; it’s kept me safe for most of my life. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned how impossible it is to pick and choose what we give away in these moments. I have been offering the entirety of my presence, not just what I didn’t want to deal with.

This meant that when I came back, I realized a lot had been neglected. I have not sat and felt anything, and even as I write this, I sense a fear in doing so. It’s likely that I haven’t been doing well for a long time, I can tell that now. That’s a big fat reality check. But it wasn’t just me. It was also a trade that included the richness of presence, where I coast through experiences without having fully lived them. I’ve been elsewhere. This is a place with no solid foundation and no identifiable opportunity to root.

In all the pushing and ambition and daydreaming I have been ridding myself of right now, neglecting the emotional discomfort and hardship by feeding the desire machine which held a shiny promise in front of me, but still it dangled too far in the distance to really see what it was.

In all these exciting personal ventures, I’ve forgotten to ask myself why I’m doing what I’m doing. Left behind is the one that has space for joy, for connection and for expansion. I’ve neglected the curious side of me, the version that wonders what mud feels like even if I’ve felt it a hundred times. What if it’s different this time? In short, I’ve forgotten to wonder if I’m enjoying myself. I haven’t been. Sheesh.

Now the trouble with this is not that I’ve been having a hard time, but that I’ve hardly noticed. I’d compartmentalized for what I thought was my future, but it was really more an apprehension to feel the depth of what I’ve gone through while I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve wound my sadness up so tightly; I’ve abandoned myself in a desperate attempt at finding refuge.

I’ve been checking off boxes, I’ve pushed and found success in some areas, and I’ve hit walls in others. Underlying this is the motivation of escape, and the prayer for something other than what I’m going through. So, what if nothing happens? What if I failed time and time again? What if this was my life forever?

Well, nothing would change, only my intentions and approach would. I would engage with my world for the sole purpose of wanting to, or at least in the areas of most resistance. I would be cultivating joy, rather than imagining it in some other time. I would live very similarly, speak to folks to same way, participate in hobbies and enjoy them.

Are we only showing up out of the promise of a reward? I don’t want to barter anymore. I don’t think these promises are worth much.

Instead, I want to figure out how to live with the wanting and without relying on the vision of reward to validate the effort. I want to enjoy the effort. When I face doubt, rather than convincing myself it will be worth it, I want to remind myself why I participate in the effort in the first place. I don’t want to live for outcomes, I want to live for process. Cliché journey vs. destination vibes, but clichés are what they are for a reason. Overall, it’s hard, and I’m impatient. But I am too scared of loss to forget to be with things while they are here, and while I am too.

I want to flip this to the other side and say how much grief there is in having left oneself behind for so long. I haven’t been here, mainly because I haven’t wanted to be. Things have been painful, and this year has brought up a lot of complicated feelings, tied with even more complicated histories. To stay afloat, I have lived in autopilot, eaten food for sustenance and walked my dog out of habit, because I know I should. I put my external pain on the back burner and fed myself suffering instead. I threw it aside, but I still housed it, and like debt, it built interest. I’m feeling it now.

The thing about this shift is that it takes no real added cost besides overcoming the fear. It’s incredible how expensive that seems. I imagine this will take time to work through, and I will likely always struggle with doubt and longing. I just hope I don’t forget to be here while I do.

I’ll conclude this with a brief allegory that I’ve known in theory but am learning in practice. It’s one I learned in a psychology class in university, and I reference it often. If you are chased by a violent dog and you must climb a tree to escape it, do so. This is called refuge. If you remain in the tree long after the dog has gone, this is called escape. The dog is long gone. I’m working my way down the tree.