Even if they happen to have succumbed to the lures of language, logic, or mysticism (and maybe because they've succumbed), a great many smart people entertain enthusiasms, hobbies, and interests; pursue an education and then a career; and so on and yet never land on anything—a subject, a line of work, a life—that they feel passionate about. Even their enthusiasms, hobbies, and interests bore them in short order. Here is how Sandra described her situation:
At forty-nine, I find that I have not been able to sustain interest in anything really. Art in the broadest sense is the closest thing. I'm not even sure if I prefer making it or looking at it. At home, I have a collection of artwork that I have done over my lifetime including sculpture, prints, drawings, etc., and nothing looks like anything else. It seems like such a chore to try to discipline myself to investigate a subject or style more than once.
The problem is, something in me wants to have that discipline, wants to explore a subject from different perspectives and in different contexts. But I battle with myself, saying I've already done it and there are a million other things to take on. My habit is to buy all the supplies needed to do an activity, let's say for beading bracelets, make one or two pieces—and I'm done. It's out of my system. And then? Well, I'm currently enrolled in classes on culinary basics, the history of the blues, the philosophy of film, and creative writing—and I want to take photography classes, sewing lessons, and singing lessons. That says it all.
I recently did a one-year volunteer stint assisting a recreational therapist at an adult day care facility, and I enjoyed that quite a bit. But I don't care to pursue that. It's like I'm always searching for something that will stick. I enjoy doing things like wrapping presents, inventing logo designs and critiquing movies on Netflix. Over the last few years, I explored ceramics, leather crafting, embossing greeting cards, cake decorating, art restoration, and acting (I auditioned and got a call asking what my schedule was, but I didn't have enough time available to rehearse!).
I like it all, but nothing sticks. There's nothing that I'm specifically passionate about. But I wish there was. I can't help but feel that if I concentrate on one activity, I will be missing out on another. Am I just greedy? Do I have the passion but not the focus? I envy artists who can explore their subjects in depth and over time. It feels like I will live my whole life trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.
Sometimes it is primarily a person's job that he takes no interest in while the rest of his life retains at least some luster. Gina, for example, explained:
All my life I've been looking for meaningful work. I am fifty-three years old with college degrees and a broad work experience. Every time I work somewhere, after a short period, I am bored. The “work” I really love to do is raising my children, writing, painting, and other creative things. But my paid work has never held any interest for me.
Gina is lucky because, often enough, it is all of life that a person experiences as boring and lusterless. Nothing excites; nothing holds much meaning. This can be switched for that, and that for the next thing, all with a half-stifled yawn.
This state of affairs should remind you of Kafka's “hunger artist,” that sad figure from existential literature who could fast so well that, as a circus attraction, he spent his time wasting away in front of amused customers willing to pay to see his slow demise. From his point of view, he had no skill; it was simply that no food interested him. When asked by his supervisor how he'd acquired the “admirable talent” for fasting, the following interchange occurred:
“But you shouldn't admire it,” said the hunger artist. “Well then, we don't admire it,” said the supervisor, “but why shouldn't we admire it?” “Because I had to fast. I can't do anything else,” said the hunger artist. “Just look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can't you do anything else?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor's ear so that he wouldn't miss anything, “because I couldn't find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart's content, like you and everyone else.” Those were his last words, but in his failing eyes there was the firm, if no longer proud, conviction that he was continuing to fast.
Many smart people find themselves in this odd situation, firm but not proud in their conviction that there is nothing in life that genuinely interests them or that can genuinely interest them. They claim that they would dearly love it if something did passionately interest them, and yet their claim sounds just a little hollow, as hollow as the hunger artist's. Is it really the case that a person in decent health and in decent spirits wouldn't find ice cream, pizza, barbecued ribs, or something tasty—or is it rather that he is indeed in poor spirits and down on life in a special way such that his appetite has been ruined?
Whatever the precise reasons for this malaise, countless smart people find themselves in the position of Kafka's hunger artist, wasting away, in love with nothing, and convinced that at second glance all pursuits turn empty. Nothing seems able to provoke the psychological experience of meaning in them or for them. They read a novel—that was okay; now what? They plant roses—that was okay; now what? They learn carpentry—they make a few objects; now what? They take a class—that was interesting enough; now what? They start a business—the stress outweighs the rewards; on to the next thing.
A person who stands as a hobbyist in life, bereft of meaning, despairs. Yet there is some odd stubbornness to her plight, as if she is determined not to give up her worldview even if another one might come with meaning, just as addicts fiercely hold on to their addictions and will only pay lip service—or no service at all—to the idea of recovery and a life without their cigarettes, cocaine, or alcohol. Indeed, many smart people become attached to both—to a life empty of meaning and to an addiction. The stubbornness soothing the pain produced by a stubborn refusal to take a genuine stab at making meaning.
Consider the following report from Frank that ties several of these themes together. Frank explained:
After years of fruitless effort, I don't know if I am even capable of feeling truly passionate about a particular subject, work, or life. Maybe I'm just not one of those people. This is actually one of my greatest fears: a long life of making due with enthusiasms. I suspect that one of the main hurdles for me is that I don't believe in absolutes. So, while I will probably never believe otherwise, I need to figure out if I am using this perfectly reasonable core belief of mine as a defense mechanism to do nothing but pursue enthusiasms.
When I was a young man, athletics interested me deeply. In college, when I began studying existentialism and reading the Russians, Camus, Sartre, and Heidegger and then Derrida, Lacan, Hegel, and Foucault, well, it was all heady stuff, and I got lost in meaning and meaninglessness and my own intelligence. I worked extremely hard to push my mind and my consciousness and writing papers for me became the most difficult and the most important thing in my life.
For the ten years after college graduation, my life was consumed by my alcoholism and drug abuse. I was either hopelessly sad, or I was ecstatic. I was either jobless or, having convinced someone of my “genius,” in charge of something I knew nothing about nor cared anything about. Did I reach out to others out of genuine interest in their lives and selves? Did I allow them to define their own meaning in my life and accept them or reject them based on my own self-awareness and self-acceptance? Rarely. More often than not, I used the people in my life to prove to myself I wasn't a monster.
I haven't had a drink in a dozen years. Without question, if I were to die today, my last contribution to the misty vapors of shared consciousness would be my pride in this, the greatest accomplishment of my life. The rewards of a committed, hard-fought effort in a twelve-step program are huge and real. Some of my decisions in sobriety have been just as stupid as those in addiction, and some of my mistakes just as egregious. But I also know myself better—although the core problem remains.
Where does that leave me? I am a husband and a father of two. I am a writer and a graphic designer, gainfully employed by an insurance company to create brochures for its clients on the subject of employee benefits. I have changed jobs eight times in thirteen years. I am overweight and on two medications for high blood pressure and two medications for either a major depressive disorder or bipolar II, since I haven't seemed to respond to all of the medications or talk therapy.
Over the years, I have taken hundreds of tests to find out what I already know about my emotions, intelligence, aptitudes, interests, strengths, grit, outlook, etc. What I already know is that I have hundreds of enthusiasms, and I could make a very successful life around many of them. Teach math? Of course! Create and build a foundation supporting the arts in elder care settings? Why not? Study spiders? What could be better? Write and design employee benefits brochures? It's a living! And so on.
Lately, I am trying something new. I am lowering the dosages on my brain meds with the goal of getting off them altogether to see if my non-medicated brain is really all that bad. I am trying to implement natural psychology in my life. Yes, I have had the experience of nothing really interesting me deeply. This is my reality, and it is terrible. But my hope is that one of the real rewards of the twelve-step program and natural psychology is the knowledge that the answer isn't “out there somewhere.” The key is that I have the courage and the resources to change things for myself and to try to live life in a more meaningful way.
How might a person who has not found anything to love or any place to invest meaning change his life so as to increase his chances of falling in love with something and really investing in something? Natural psychology has many tools and practices for making these changes, and I'll describe several of them in chapter 18. For now, let's take a preliminary look at what our smart hunger artist might try.
First, he might make a new or renewed effort to acknowledge the problem. It is one thing to act as if you have identified a problem—say, with alcohol—and a very different thing to really acknowledge the breadth and depth of a problem. This acknowledgment is a mixture of surrender, acceptance, and honesty well-known in recovery circles as a necessary component of the process. In this case, he might finally acknowledge that his approach to meaning has not worked and that a new approach deserves scrutiny. Natural psychology calls this new approach value-based meaning-making, and our hunger artist might actively investigate it.
Second, he might learn some new language and the implications of that new language. He might learn to talk about meaning investments and meaning opportunities and begin to grasp what those phrases signify about the exact nature and location of meaning. He would sit down and try to articulate his life purposes, name efforts that would make him proud, describe how he wants to represent himself in the world and how he wants to be, and in similar ways paint a picture for himself of himself as the hero of his own story and the only arbiter of meaning in the universe. As a result, to take one example of what this change would signify, he would never just take a class again. Rather, he would carefully think through to what extent that class might or might not serve his life purposes and might or might not amount to a meaning opportunity.
Third, he might recognize and acknowledge that there must be elements of his formed personality, and perhaps of his original personality as well, that have made meaning a real problem for him—and that therefore he is going to have to pay real attention to his own personality and make his available personality really available to him so as to retrain and upgrade himself. Like someone who has felt occasional joy but who has difficulty being roused to joy, he is obliged to realize that he has a constitutional difficulty in being roused to meaning and that it is directly on his shoulders to do that rousing.
In short, he will need to stand up. This standing up, whether conceptualized as an act of courage, a commitment, an acceptance of effort, or in some other way, is the key gesture in the process. As he nominates himself as the hero of his own story and as the only arbiter of his meaning in the universe, he slowly stands up. At the end of the process, he finds himself standing. This is a completely different gesture from kneeling, meditating, sinking into the sofa, or fasting in front of amused spectators. He may not know what precisely to do now that he is standing—but he knows for sure that he has risen.
Next, he might draw up a list of the values and principles that he suspects or believes he cares about, not so as to rank them, since values and principles can't be ranked, but rather to reawaken in him the sense that values and principles matter and that these are the ones that likely matter to him. To see words like truth, beauty, goodness, and justice in front of him on a list that he himself has generated may help remind him why he has gotten to his feet and what he intends to do next. Creating such a list is a significant step in the meaning-making process.
There are more practices to look at and much more to say about this meaning-recovery process. No doubt each hunger artist became a hunger artist in his own way. There is almost certainly no single path to a lifetime of acute meaninglessness. There are so many ways to kill off meaning: by not caring, by not committing, by not finding the courage, by not choosing, by not besting demons, by not standing up. But the recovery process for each hunger artist can look identical. It involves a powerful, plausible shift in paradigm, mental model, and attitude in the direction of personal meaning-making—and with that shift, an end to fasting.