I met a man today who is having grave doubts about his life, his career, and the path he is currently traveling. He seemed to be questioning why he is doing what he is doing. Is it for the money, the implied power, to support his family, or is there something else driving him? He used to have a sense of self, a sense of purpose. He said he used to wake up with drive and passion, now he only wakes up to dread. I could see a real disenchantment in his eyes, as if the magic of his former self had left him on the side of the road. The good news is he knows he is in crisis and is taking it seriously. The sad news is that he does not see a different future for himself, or a way to move forward with his life in tact.
We all have times of discouragement. At one time or another we all experience a crisis of faith. We fear that our crisis of faith will leave us wounded beyond what we can bear. As if we are on a road where we cannot see the end, or if we see the end we no longer want to go that direction. If you have not had such a time in your life, it can be hard to listen to someone who is right in the midst of all the doubt. You can’t relate, you can’t empathize, you just don’t understand. You can’t see their perspective without thinking they have done something wrong to end up in this state.
There is a positive side to this type of crisis. It makes you dig deep and ask the tough questions. Why am I doing all this? What is really important to me? Can I stand by and live the life I have spent decades creating, or is it time for a drastic change? Who am I and what do I truly believe? What am I willing to stand for? These are not questions you can answer during a commercial break. They are not questions you can answer without deep thought and much introspection. For some people they are not questions they have the courage to even ask. A crisis of faith makes you stop and examine everything you know about yourself and determine if that is who you really want to be.
When you face who you are, do you want to be you? If the answer is no, then change. If the answer is that you are not sure, then keep looking. Or maybe your crisis has driven you somewhere between the two. Honestly there is no definitive answer that applies to everyone. We each get to experience our own crisis our own way. We each get to face disenchantment and struggle through to renewal. We each get to tackle our problems one day at a time hoping that tomorrow will be better. We each must face the truth about ourselves and our lives. For the man I met I think he was relived to know he wasn’t crazy and needed a complete stranger to listen while he voiced his disenchantment. Almost as if he needed to confess outloud that he had doubts…and the world did not explode because it was spoken in words outside his own head. I do not know if I helped, I simply listened. Maybe that was all he needed. To us our crisis of faith can seem insurmountable, to our audeince it may sound more like a really bad day. Either way, I’m glad he got his thought process started and that I was able to listen.
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