The Ends of Life

“The Urge to End it All” is the title of an article in New York Times Magazine on suicide this past weekend. The article focuses on the difference between passion and premeditation, arguing that the people who choose the most fatal means—such as jumping or guns—tend to be the most impulsive. They are the least likely to have exhibited signs of mental illness. Rather, they tend to be overwhelmed by some acute blast of inner pain and unable to imagine a way out. If a ready method for ending the pain presents itself in the moment, they choose it. However, if the means is not easily secured, or made less accessible, they are not likely to find another means. They will, instead, find a way through.

One psychiatrist reported, after interviewing nine people who survived leaps from the Golden Gate Bridge: “What was immediately apparent… was that none of them had truly wanted to die. They had wanted their inner pain to stop; they wanted some measure of relief; and this was the only answer they could find. They were in spiritual agony, and they sought a physical solution.”
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The article reveals a crucial insight about our desire for spirit: learning to discern its wisdom, just as with our desires nourishment and physical intimacy, involves learning how to sense and respond to our own pain. For these feelings of life-threatening pain are our desires—in this case, expressions of our desires for life, for more life, for the life we want to live. It is because we want so much that we both hurt so much and want the pain to stop so much.

It is a paradox. Because we want more from life, we consider ending it. Without the desire for more, we wouldn’t care. Without the feeling of impossibility, we wouldn’t be willing to end it. Our pain is double—both desire and its impossibility—and in this double nature lies the secret to its wisdom.
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In learning to discern that wisdom, as in the case of the other desires, it is helpful to first debunk some myths. The first is that our desire for spirit will be satisfied by some thing—whether it be a promotion or an award, a piece of property or gadget, a second home, enough money, a passionate relationship, or a lean physique. We tend to believe that we will be happy if something happens and happy when something happens, hinging our happiness on that happening.

Happy if. Happy when.

But study after psychological study has shown that once we get what we think we want, our desire simply shifts to something else, and we find ourselves wanting again.

Our tendency then, if we tire of shifting objects, is to blame desire for being so fickle and transient, so restless and unsettling.

Desire is not the problem. The problem is that we make desire the problem.
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A second myth to debunk is that all we need to do is find the right answer, the right belief system, the right explanation for our suffering, and then we will be able to live happily. We turn to religious teachings and self-help gurus, to spiritual practices and paths in search of that worldview, the overarching picture of what is, that will enable us to make sense of the pain that dogs us. If we can secure such a meaning, whether political, religious, or scientific, we imagine, then we will be happy.

But there is no indication that true believers, the religious or spiritually inclined, the politically engaged or socially active, are any less prone to mental illness, depression, or suicide than those who are not.

Our desire for spirit wants more. But what?
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Before me on the floor is a vast array of blocks and figures—big mega blocks, small mega blocks, wooden blocks, organized in squares, and buildings, populated by tiny animal figures, carefully lined, arranged, settled in their enclosures. Jessica and Kyra have set up a horse farm, in line with their dream of having 150 horses each, mostly thoroughbreds, and being jockeys. Or veterinarians. Jordan has a dairy farm featuring cows of all shapes and sizes.

We live on a farm. My kids play farm. When I had first noticed this, I had chuckled, especially when I had to interrupt their play at farm to get them to do farm. Time to feed the chickens! But I had quickly learned. This play is serious.

For my kids are not merely playing. They are acting out their visions for the future, but not any future. They are creating the world in which they want to live—a world that will provide them with everything they need to unfold their interests, use their skills, and become what and who they want to be. They are creating a world in which they are the ones with the power to name the animals and barns, their values and goals.

I look at the spread before me. Jordan, Jessica, and Kyra, crouched together in the middle, are surrounded with manure bunkers and watering troughs. They are setting up chore schedules and gathering appropriate tools, plowing fields and planting crops. Certainly, they are not “really” doing these things—they are pretending—but don’t tell them so. They feel as if they really are doing these tasks, and in some sense, they are right. For they are practicing the bodily patterns of thinking and feeling, planning and problem solving—the patterns of sensation and response—that they will need in order to be farmers. Their movements are making them into people for whom this desire for a farm is real and possible; they are testing and refining that desire at every turn. They do not want to be interrupted. For anything.
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The play of these children offers a clue to what we desire from our lives. They are children, yes, entertaining themselves in an imaginary world. They are also human beings, naming and bringing into being for themselves a world in which they can thrive. Their pleasure is palpable.

Just as our desire for food is a desire for an experience of being nourished; just as our desire for sex is a desire for an experience of giving and receiving a life-enabling touch; so it is time to consider that our desire for spirit is a desire to participate in the acts of naming and making real a world we love that loves us. It is the pleasure of participating in our own process of bodily becoming, creating and becoming the patterns of sensation and respond that will guide us in unfolding what we have to give.

This play is serious.

Next week: How our physio-spiritual pain teaches us to find the play in the moment.