Victor Frankl wrote « Man’s Search for Meaning » , an introduction to his specific form of psychotherapy, called « Logotherapy ». Having survived Auschwitz he concluded that the main motivation of man was the search for meaning.
I consider at different points in my life I’ve had a grand idea for giving meaning to my life. Meaning overlaps with purpose. A question which we asked was what would you like written on your tomb? How would you like to be known?
My friend wanted to be a doctor from a child. My desire to be a physician occurred much later in life.
First I wanted to be an astronaught. I’d read all the science fiction of the local library loving the explorer fiction. I’d equally loved reading all the history tales of Marco Polo, Captain Vancouver and such. The idea of finding new lands and people excited me. As an early teen I’d range far on my bicycle. In 1966 the original series of Star Trek premiered. I’d race home after school to watch the next episode. It was the Cold War early days of the Space Race. I remember watching the early Apollo flights. They culminated in Neil Armstrong from Apollo 11 taking the first step on the moon in 1969. « One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, »
I was forever exploring, Exploration and adventure. I’d bicycle. I’d canoe. I’d walk through unknown parts of my city. This gave me meaning. I’d later drop acid and begin the inward search that lead to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the whole world of recovery. I hitchhiked across Canada and later bicycled across Europe.
So I wanted to be an explorer but really I wanted to be an astronaught. When I did hallucinogens I was drawn to the inner exploration and adventure and unknown and would become a space cadet.
These thoughts arose out of my adolescent years, the late 60’s and the famed summer of 69, the year of Woodstock.
I was writing poetry and performing it in coffeehouses and playing rudimentary guitar. I wanted to be a ‘Poet » but there wasn’t a job attached to that. I actually did my first year at university in theatre with the aim of being a playwright. I was a dancer and actor at the time. I don’t think I ever want to be a rock star though the life style appeared, So many Canadian’s want the lifestyle of the artist as opposed to the meaning and purpose and discipline. I was definitely disciplined.
I think of my life in nodes, points at which crossroads were apparent. Decisions that I knew were monumental at the time and looking back were even more so. When I fell in love with my first love and made love for the first time I knew I could never be a monk or a minister. I’d been raised Christian and being good and having a family were expected, the norm. ‘All you need is love’ was the Beatles motto of the day. But while I wanted a partner to accompany me I saw them as being a fellow astronaught who’d loved travelling meeting the families with wife and children accompanying the man. The early communes seeded a solution. There was such creativity and simple fun in those days. We fucked like bunnies and got drunk and talked all night long smoking and it was good. I played chess then too.
I was in university again when I wanted to be a renaissance man and decided I wanted to do science more than the arts. I had a calling in the University of Winnipeg Library. I’d begun studying Paramahansa Yoganada. The whole spiritual awakening path was there. Along with the 8 fold path of Buddhism right livelihood and Jesus as a healer and teacher.
I remember I wanted to be a renaissance man then an intellectual. I started in Surgery. I wanted to be a missionary doctor. But then in the city I’d begun to study Public Health and Community Medicine but in the return to the city and pursuit of family and children I began psychiatry having found so much illness the product of choice and psychiatric disease. The accidents I was seeing were so often alcoholism. So much of illness was a consequence of depression and anxiety. The least served were the mentally ill and I wanted to understand insaniety. I loved R. D. Laing, Freud, and Jung. I wanted to be a psychotherapist. While I loved medicine and had been a really good family physician I never set out to be a psycho pharmacologist but like I slid into being a psychiatrist becoming a psychopharmacologist followed from working with head injuries and psychosomatic medicine.
While I’d been raised in a spiritual home and trained with spiritual leaders and studied the spiritual teachings of all religions I’d become a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and later would be born again with Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
In the study of addiction medicine following psychiatry and recovery I found myself back in the quest to know God , to follow His will and understand the existentialist question of my existence.
I was an explorer travelling to different countries and sailing in my 40 foot sailboat down the coast of North America to Mexico and then solo through winter hurricanes from Canada to the Hawaiian Islands. I was hunting and fishing and exploring the wilderness too, a wilderness doctor, among other things, writing papers in medical journals and writing stories and articles and eventually publishing a poetry book and a book of observations from psychiatric practice. I remain a blogger. One day after decades of practice and the joy of family and friends, never having had children though I married women who said they wanted family but I’m not sure in retrospect they really did. I had dogs. One day I was old and again contemplating life and death. The old questions of meaning and purpose and existentialism. Mostly I was asking, what next? I had the answers that I set out to find when I entered each of these phases and now I was kind of coasting. Time was more important. Carpe Diem, Augustine and perspective.
So I wanted
1. To be an astronaught, explorer
2. To be a poet, writer
3 . To be a renaissance man/intellectual and spiritual
4. I wanted to be a spiritual disciple to follow Jesus
5. I want to be enlightened
I’ve imagined what I’d do if I stopped doing what I’m doing and I’ve had the following thoughts
1. Sex change. Or at least live cross dressed, like black like me , and add breasts. I’ve always liked breasts. I like wearing skirts too. I wore kilts, then sarongs and just generally like a skirt. I lived in jeans and suits my entire life enjoying jeans for my hobby farm and riding the harley and hunting . I found the suit with the sports jacket a power combination, the work wear of a physician and intellectual poet. I loved best living in shorts and sarong in the tropics. I don’t know that it’s a permanent desire, I wonder if it’s a matter of sex addiction or just wanting a new identity or a community that’s less dominated by men with many wives and children and a desire to kill and compete. I’ve accepted long ago that I was a lover not a fighter and I really like the LGBT community. I have had to defend myself from men and women and feel too old for that and the politics. I think a transwoman is less a ‘threat’ to these terrribly stunted insecure folk who often suffer megalomania. They like positions in government and law. They’re very controlling. And afraid.
2. I’ve thought of travelling to the south away from the winter cold and snow. I’ve thought of motorcycling down to the tip of South America. I’ve thought of living again in Mexico. I’ve thought of taking my RV, one of them, to Arizona or Baja. I loved Costa Rica. I want to live in the warmth and wear as little clothes as possible.
3, I want to write.
I have some book projects
I still write poems
I still blog
I’d like to write a novel
I’d like to write a kind of memoir
I have some ideas about psychiatry I’d like to share in a book form.
I’m not focused or driven. I ‘ve considered doing university courses in creative writing. I was involved with the Canadian Authors Assoviation and loved the people and time but family emergency and the demands of work interfered. I’ve lived through Covid and been thoroughly depleted often feeling all I can do is work and eat and sleep. The despair is palpable. I’ve realized too that the government is the problem, like my nurse friend who came back from Africa tired of caring for children who were then recruited to terrorist organizations. My existential crisis was somewhat resolved by a month of travel and art galleries and museums and the pleasure of Laura’s company. Instead of giving I was taking in the incredible creativity of man kind and lifted by the wonders of men and women. I was moved by the beauty.
I’m working in this structured setting as a psychiatrist because like James Taylor’s bartender song « i like 4 walls around me. ». My friends with children don’t realize how contained their lives are by that and that by contrast I’ve been ultra conservative given the incredible freedom of choice I’ve felt. I live my life for my dog and a few friends. My friend Laura is the most important in my life but while I felt the women I married wanted me and needed me the joy of my relationship with Laura is that we enjoy each other
I’m a community consultant psychopharmacologist and addiction medicine specialist and it’s okay. I’m moseying along, My aim is to work virtual from the south in November but continue to live and work here. For now. I’m rather blessed. I’ve a great dog and Laura as friend. Any problem I have is me. Like my black friend Milton said, looking in the mirror, « i was looking at the problem’.
I am struggling to adapt to being older. So many friends and family have died. There seems to be a limited time but there may not be. The idea of time and being old seems often from without and within. I don’t feel particularly old. I imagine I look old only when I see old people like me and imagine I must look something like them.
Seven Cardinal Sins or Capital Vices
Greed
Pride
Wrath
Sloth
Gluttony
Avarice
Envy
Lust
Seven heavenly virtues
Chastity (versus lust)
Faith (versus idolatry)
Good Works (versus greed)
Concord (versus discord)
Sobriety (versus indulgence)
Patience (versus wrath)
Humility (versus pride)
I like the serenity prayer
I like carpe Diem, just for today
I like the idea of faith and mystery
I like the idea of character versus personality
I like the idea of ‘spiritual progress’ not perfection.
Each day I feel I’m getting better but older.
I’m been impatient a lot of my life and struggle with ‘thy will be done not my will’
Comparison is a problem….the intellectual utopian solutions that never take into account others and that peoplee are like cats especially when herded.
My issue these days is wondering if the whole idea of rejecting the flesh goes against creation which celebrated Adam in the garden finding and naming things. That’s where moderation comes in. Addiction is idolatry. But all those rules that controlling types and parental types make up, probably like the good public health rules get polluted with pride. I wonder if God might ask, what did you do with your vacation on earth I gave you? How would he feel if I said I sat navel gazing. The gospel according to Bif might have something to say to that as well as Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s easy to be a middle class Canadian Christian living a life of ‘quiet desperation’ but what’s wrong with hedonism and epicurianism anyway. Most people are celebrating the religion of aetheism and the gluttony of consumerism. Laura and I and Madigan are enjoying baguettes with bacon this morning. I’ve bought a ham for Easter dinner. There’s no way Jesus was vegetarian.
Posts
