Yes, Iām confused about life just like everyone else. I get depressed, I struggle and I feel lost too, more often than you probably would imagine.
In fact, back in November of last year, I had a bit of a breakdown. That might be an understatement. It was actually quite a significant breakdown.
Despite having been traveling for 4 years as a merchant marine sailor, despite doing things like spending time in Venice, Mallorca, Croatia, Belfast, Dublin, Mexico, Turkey and more during the first half of my early stages of lifeā¦when November came around, nothing made sense to me.
I was placing intense personal pressure on myself, I had no answers to anything and every day I woke up with a āholy-crap-I-have-no-idea-what-Iām-doingā kind of confusion.
And then, while in my home town, I suffered from a seizureĀ as an added bonus. After moving into the first house I bought, things didnāt get much better and following a couple of more unfortunate incidents that occurred, I was officially more confused, frustrated and distraught than I had been in a long, long time.
When this happened, I just stopped what I was doing. I stopped everything. I stayed with my parents to try to figure myself out but I couldnāt. I could barely sleep at the time so I would just get out of bed at around 3:00am each day and go for a walk. Then I would sit around for hours on end doing nothing at all. Sometimes, when motivation struck for a few moments, I would try to think about every aspect of my life hoping to find some kind of clarity but that clarity never came.
The days passed and I felt as if I was going absolutely nowhere, making no progress at all, still feeling as completely confused about life as ever.
One day, after three weeks of this sitting around doing nothing, I finally made an important realization, interestingly enough, while eating a burrito.
I had gotten the urge to drive over to a small burrito shop, one that I eat from my home town. I ordered the same burrito I always order, filled my glass with the same sweet iced tea that I always fill my glass with and took a seat at the same table I always try to sit at. The main difference this time was that I was still fighting back tears every few minutes, something that would just hit me out of nowhere during this period of depression, and I wasnāt as eager, given my loss of appetite, to eat my burrito.
While waiting to see if Iād be able to actually eat, I started looking around the room, observing the other twenty or so diners in the restaurant. There were families, groups of friends, pairs of co-workers and a handful of other people eating alone just like me. I watched them all for around ten minutes, looking at their faces and observing their behavior and trying to figure out whatever I could about their lives.
And then I suddenlyā¦burst out laughing. Before I knew it, I couldnāt stop laughing and believe me I tried. I stared out the window, bit my lip, pinched my thigh, closed my eyes and tried all sorts of ideas without any success.
At that very moment, I realized that the āanswerā I had been looking for was so simple that I had no choice but to laugh at my inability to have seen it earlier.
All along I thought I was looking for some kind of magical clarity. I thought I needed to find a way to get rid of the confusion and feeling of being extremely lost.
But as I looked around me in that burrito shop, I started to understand that every single human being feels confused and lost as well, over and over again throughout life. Nobody is exempt from these feelings, itās all a part of the human journey.
So, being confused and lost is not so important, not such a big deal.
