“For then faith was a task of a whole lifetime, not a skill to be acquired in days or weeks” 1
From childhood into adolescence and adulthood – so always, since remembering – I have had an insatiable longing in me. A desire for more, as if my life was lacking. No fantasy or material substitute quenched this unfathomable emptiness, this fear. For tied with the void of meaning was a fear that there would never be any. Yes, that, and trepidation about living, about being. I had a restless energy – hyperactive and nervous. With this however, I also had some sort of hope or expectation; the next thing – person, item, social event – would cure this feeling. Something would fill it.
Maybe I refused to let them. The anticlimactic nature was so disappointing. Validation passing, new shine dimming. I used people and things, thinking it would be it. I would have moments of fulfillment, usually when the acid hit, the high settled. But it never lasted.
My parents had faith, have it. I was raised in diverse Buddhist meetings in our New York apartment. Men and women sitting around our living room. The statuesque golden altar at the head. They talked of their ills, of their beliefs. They chanted foreign yet familiar words. There was power in their collective voice. Melodic power.
I felt it pushed upon me, that power, on holidays – New Year's Eve, special occasions. We would chant as a family, with my brother and I angsty at the back of the room. I didn’t care for it. But it came and went at different periods of my life. I chanted for a boyfriend as a teenager. Or on a turbulent plane to make it to landing. Despite these pleas, I didn’t see faith as my solution.
I’ve since found that faith is within moments of wonder – scanning the sky and seeing a majestic sunset, being overcome with beauty, it’s that – that overcoming. Within that feeling, there’s something innately powerful, I tether onto that and believe. This often comes with doubt,
with anger, but the belief remains as I access it, through others, through moments, through action. In joining a program, in doing the “work,” I’ve learnt that faith doesn’t become someone, doesn’t fill someone, without choice. It cannot last relying only on choice, however. Each day, I must decide whether god is everything or nothing, and within that decision is action. To rectify my wrongs, to help other people, to act as if this power is everything.
I think a part of the human condition, that of being human, creates longing. Creates a need for fulfillment of some sort. My longing was problematic when I tried to solve it with marijuana and cocaine. As I said, the substances wouldn’t last. The feeling, or distraction of feeling, wouldn’t last. I needed a drug to get through a day, an event, my mind. The emptiness permeated me, fueled by fear of other people’s opinions, fear of my own opinions of myself.
Sober for a few years, it is bizarre to me that I needed substances to survive. Other than the addictive quality of narcotics and my progressing alcoholism, I really depended on these substances for my emotional security. So plagued by fear and shame, escaping was the only thing I knew. My only way of getting by. That is, until I couldn’t really get by, locked in my shame and fear. Emotions so strong, even the high couldn’t escape them. The racing, painful thoughts. The eventual psychiatric wards.
It’s through a different lens that I view these experiences now. These were problems of spirit. My longing was a side effect of a spiritual sickness. Which, really only needs to mean here that I lived in a delusional state of being. I am whole as I am, but in my reality, I was not enough, broken somehow, lacking. The longing was for fulfillment outside of self, wherein, in reality, I am internally whole. It was my perception that was broken. As a result of following certain steps, my spirit has awoken, I have been overcome.
Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard, page 5
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