Existential Clarity

My favorite line, one that I’ve returned to time and again over the years, comes from the movie Fight Club: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

If you’re here, then I trust that I’ve met you at a very strange time in your life.

What brought you here?

You’re feeling–in some existentially hard-to-point-down way–lost, confused, turned about.

Not that you’re unable to function in the world–in fact, you’ve often functioned at an astonishingly high level, something that others have frequently remarked upon. Indeed, some friends or colleagues have regularly told you: “You’re the one I always turn to. You’re like a rock or a pillar. You always have your head on straight.” 

For this reason, the confusion you’re now experiencing may come as something of a surprise.

Why now? Why at all?

And since you’ve grown accustomed to offering others advice or to simply being present with them, you’re not entirely sure to whom you can turn now that you’re the puzzled one, now that you’re the one with burning questions.

I offer bespoke clarity to those who are as existentially confused as they are stunningly open.

Stunningly open?

Yes, because it’s not incorrect also to say that you’ve felt more alive, more filled with wonderment, less judgmental, and more taken with life’s basic questions during this period than ever before in your life. In a sense, you don’t want to go back to “the way things were,” and yet you’re not sure what “going forward” or “being clear” or “living well” really looks like, especially now.

The thing is I don’t believe that clarity, of the kind I’m gesturing to here, comes in the form of a single recipe, an overarching framework, or a set of techniques. Life just isn’t like that: it’s too vast, too variable, situations too singular for that kind of top-down approach. 

So then how is clarity to be discovered, let alone lived?

Improvisationally, skillfully, wisely: we’ll inquire together in a fresh and open-minded way; now and again, I’ll lead you through some guided meditations that are more like etudes, or curious studies, in experiential understanding and not at all like reps and sets; we’ll open to the great complexities of life, to all the things that don’t fit neatly into boxes or readymade categories. And we’ll come, together, to genuine self-knowledge.

With what greater result?

You’ll get the hang of living more wisely, of being clearer and more at peace. How that happens is a beautiful mystery. Yet happen it does. Embrace the suspense.