“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Like much of Greek philosophy, that misses the real point. The truth is that if you are not present and invested, if you are not engaged, you are not really alive. Boredom and pain and risk can come with being alive, but they also exist when denied and life is gray.
Many things drive people away from the present. Grief, especially with the death of a loved one or a job, can cause a loss of capacity for doing. Some losses have measurable impairment that can be measured in terms of years. Chain together a number of those losses (jobs, engagements, dead children, and other disappointments) and it can become almost a default status or way of being. You have probably seen that in someone who was, in the colloquial phrase, “beat down.”
In loss people become even more aware of their limits, how everything that they do takes, or can take away, from everything else. Just by living some people find themselves withdrawing from life, either setting limits or mindlessly throwing themselves into new engagements or activities without worrying what they leave behind undone. One disengages from the outside, the other disengages from the inside.
Many, many men, as they grow older in the workplace, become disengaged from just about everything. When you hear an older friend talk about a father with a factory job who ceased to interact with the family other than to tell everyone to be quiet at dinner, you’ve heard a common story.
Finding a balance, a way to keep people present and invested, to keep them from refusing to become engaged or to not accept new tasks without regard for those they should be engaged with, is hard (any time someone starts missing children’s birthdays for a church calling they’ve just taken … they are accepting a new task without regard for those they should be engaged with), can be very hard. Any flaws in an approach are made more severe by grief or loss.
All of these issues are a result of not being present and invested. They are what happens when one is not awake and alive. Finding a way to be present, becoming invested again, is a return to life and a recovery from loss. It reminds one that life is worth the risk of living.
Now, traditionally women would invest in their children, men in their jobs and both in the community and each other. As the economy has shifted, with factories, smaller families (and those not living together) and more options, there has been less engagement. We live in a world where being invested in people, community and life is less and less common.
What do you do to keep life worth living? How do you keep invested in life and in God?
Wheat & Tares 
Staying engaged is a major challenge for many in the Church. When you look at the problem older singles have, or men drifting away from anything but work and television, or why we have the boy scouts as a program, all of these things are facets of trying to keep people engaged.
Wow, Stephen. I feel like I’ve been punched in the arm. Thanks for holding up a mirror. Truth is, nothing makes life worth living for me at this point. I’ve been trying hard to find something, but short of hoping my kids need me, there is nothing.
I see myself in the “disengaged from the outside” mode. I’ve been trying to fight it (leading to a few occasional forays into the “inside” mode,) but I genuinely have little desire to do anything but be at home and spend time with my kids when they are at home with me. I’ve even had trouble blogging lately (which used to be an outlet for me). Every post has been forced.
Yet, I feel restless like I should be doing more.
I suppose my question is whether or not you think disengagement is a beneficial and appropriate phase of grief, or if it is something that should be fought against? I’m afraid of it becoming my way of life.
“whether or not you think disengagement is a beneficial and appropriate phase of grief”
I’ll take a stab at this, if that’s okay… I think disengagement can be fine, and even part of a growth process, if one is present with and sits with the disengagement. Often when I’m not engaging it’s because I’m just distracting myself, or just doing the opposite of “engaging.” What I try to work on with myself and with clients is for them to be present and aware of their experience, regardless of whether they are “engaged with life” or not. For example, one client would get stuck, almost frozen, unable to do anything… just sitting on his/her bed. Trying to fight this or feeling like she/he “should” do something about it only made it worse. Rather than continue to fight this battle – it helps some people to turn toward this “stuckness” or “disengagement” and sit with it, befriend it. Finding out what purpose the disengaged part serves can be helpful.
“The unexamined life is not worth living…”
My mother always used to quote somebody finishing the sentence with “…but the overexamined life is not lived at all.”
Stephen,
Very nice. Thanks for this. I think of admonitions from President Monson not to get lost in the past or the future, but to live in the present.
I appreciated AdamF’s counsel to be “in the present” with our disengagement, too.
I understood so little of this concept until a few years ago when life events introduced me to 12-step thinking and helped me to see the value of living “in the moment”. Engaging in the moment is as important as whatever it is we’re engaging in, I think.
That said, your example of men who gravitate over the years to work and TV (and away from human contact with family members) rings true. I had a boss who learned golf in his middle age with his wife so they would have something to do when the kids were gone and they were retired. They now live on a Florida golf course and are quite happy together in retirement.
Finding some way to connect with those around us is crucial, I think — it is for me, anyway. But there are those days when I need to be “in the moment” with my detachment, as well.
Silver Rain — disengagement is very, very normal. It is part of surviving grief. I originally wrote this as an essay on grief recovery, following some personal reflections.
Most people, because grief consumes personal capacity and creates a measure of disability, have to disengage to an extent during grief. The problem that many face is fully re-engaging. It can be very hard.
In my own case, where I buried three children in a five year period and went through additional problems as well, learning to re-engage has been difficult.
Currently I’m in a ward with a high priests group of over twenty attending on a given Sunday. I’m lucky, fewer than half have callings and I get to be the assistant ward librarian. The ward librarian is extremely gentle, patient and thoughtful and I remarked to my wife that I have a lot to learn by modeling him.
But there is not that much to engage me at Church. We have only one child left at home. I had to drop out of returning to working out in karate again because of her needs.
Anyway, I think that disengagement is normal, but it is something only for a time.
I feel for you, wish I had something useful I could say, other than I wish you and your children well. I know that at times only my surviving child gave me any reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Thomas — isn’t that the truth.
AdamF and Paul — I think you both have hit the right key that there is more than disengagement in isolation. I’ve found twelve step literature useful (I like Al Anon, even though I don’t have any alcoholics in my life, the milieu of powerlessness over external events resonates for me).
SilverRain, btw, we would still like a guest post for Wheat and Tares from you.
Something like http://rainscamedown.blogspot.com/2010/12/singles-of-certain-age-or-what-i-wish.html with perhaps a little more discussion of the current policies and alternatives.
Anyway, seems my e-mails aren’t making it through the spam filter so I thought I’d mention that here.
During various hard times, I have heard the admonition – cast your problems on the Lord or “my yoke is easy” or some variation. This is great in theory, but hard in practice. It’s never really worked for me.
The thing that has worked best for me involves various techniques from Buddhist meditation. Although 2500 years old, these teachings echo a lot of what has been said above, about engaging in the present, in the Now.
The ironic things: Focusing on “nothing” helped me reengage with “everything”. And studying a religion that doesn’t necessarily define God has helped me feel closer to the Divine.
Strange thing, that. But it works.
Stephen:
Thanks for reminding me that the anticipation of loss can also cause disengagement.
Does anyone know how to actually live “in the moment”? I feel like I am always preparing for this or that, but never actually fully enjoying what I am doing to prepare for an event or day. (i.e. FHE, Christmas, etc.) I wish I knew better how to enjoy what I am presently doing.
#10 Living in the moment is a skill I’m still working on. But here are a few things that have helped me. Realizing that I don’t need to control everything around me (this took quite some time and effort on my part, including working with a self-help group and a therapist) allowed me to focus less on events and more on the now.
Of course my work and life responsibilities do require me to plan for the future still, but focusing on now allows me to enjoy a sacrament meeting instead of thinking about the lesson I’m about to teach, for instance. More importantly, it allows me to see the positive thing my kid does instead of count the future failures because of the one thing he might have done wrong.
It also allows me to “feel” in the moment instead of judging every decision by the future implications. If someone asks me to do something and I don’t feel like I can (because it’s family time or because I don’t feel well or because I’m already engaged in something else I want to be doing) I give myself permission to say no without feeling guilt for the future implications of that choice (or the ridiculous measurement against some standard of acceptance or perfection).
It also allows me to acknowledge sometimes that I am (or need to be) disengaged for a bit for my own mental and spiritual well being, and that’s ok.
I realize I haven’t really talked about how to get there, but more what like “there” looks like for me.
Thanks Paul, that does help me and I appreciate you taking the time to write your thoughts about it.