"My life will never get better": In a mental hole with nothing to look forward to in life
Channel: Quest for a Meaningful Life
Date: 2020-01-13

Everyone has experienced being in a mental hole to one degree or another. 
The feeling of being in a hole. 
The feeling like "Everything in my life is very closed in. 
I can't see very far. 
I can't move anywhere. 
Everything is just sort of stuck the way it is." And it's not easy to get out of a hole. 
Just like being at the bottom of a pit. 
But one thing that I found that is useful for me to remember in that situation is that this hole, the pit, is not the whole world. 
There's more out there. 
My life is not this hole. 
The universe is not this hole. 
But that seems to be the way that the thinking goes in that kind of closed in, claustrophobic, shrunken mental state, where it does feel like being buried in a corner, buried in a hole somewhere, and that is all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life. 
It seems to be built into the negative mindset, the feeling that things will not get better, and that, you know, if anything, this hole is only going to get deeper, and this corner is only going to get smaller. 
But if others were to see you, if you were to see somebody else who was in this mental hole situation, it looks somewhat like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand. 
So the idea of somebody sort of hiding like they just want to pretend to be in this little corner. 
They want to pretend to be in darkness. 
They want to pretend to be hidden. 
Sort of someone building their own box. 
Or it would look like somebody who has built their own prison cell and is remaining within it. 
And you could suggest leaving it, but it's not possible for them to even imagine what it would be like to not be in that cell, because that is their world. 
It's easy to become a hole dweller. 
You start to get used to your hole, and start to kind of count on it, as miserable as it is, that it has a certain comfort to it, compared to the unknown and what seems to be so untrustworthy. 
Anything outside, it's almost like you can't believe it. 
And that even though it is great suffering to be in the hole, at least it's sort of reliable suffering, versus any kind of hope for anything outside can just be seemed like setting oneself up for disappointment. 
So all these are describing a very, very dark mental state, and dark is a good metaphor for it, because it is like being hidden in this dark hole. 
I have been in that state to some degree at certain times in my life, and I know that certain people suffer through it to a very large degree. 
And I think what is helpful for me to remember: it's no solution, there's no easy way out, but it seems like the first step for me is to realize, to understand that there is more out there. 
This hole is not my life. 
This is not where I am doomed to spend the rest of my life. 
This hole is not my whole experience of the universe. 
There is more to the universe out there. 
There is more to my life that is beyond this particular place. 
Does that get me there? No. 
Does it show the route to get there? No. 
But it is a beginning step, to at least imagine the possibility that, at some point in the future, I will be outside this hole. 
It might be for a short time. 
Maybe I'll come back. 
But I have a chance to see more of the universe than my little corner I'm in now. 
Whatever I'm dealing with right now, that is not the everything possibility. 
We live in a universe where we have so much more possibility than we actually manifest in our lives. 
There is so much more that we can become, so much more that we can do and experience, far beyond what anyone can experience in a lifetime. 
And yet it's so easy for us to become stuck in a very tiny corner, a little sliver of the universe, and to just get used to that, to the point where we don't believe there's anything else. 
But there is always more. 
There is always another place that it's possible to get to. 
And because we're always changing, it is absolutely possible for us to change. 
Our hole can change. 
We can change. 
So that there is always a chance to get out of the hole. 
Now, I don't like to hear- when I'm in that negative mental state, I don't like to hear kind of generic promises, generic platitudes, of "It'll all be OK." And I imagine this might sound like that. 
But what I'm saying, I don't mean it to be in any way kind of guarantee that things will be OK. 
There's no guarantee. 
There's no guarantee things will get better for you. 
There is no comfort, platitude, saying "There there, you'll be fine." It's simply what I believe to be a basic truth to accept: that no matter what situation you're in, there are other possible situations that you could be in. 
And by simply acknowledging that it's possible, I believe this can give the chance to begin to change, to begin to dig out of the hole, to climb out of the hole, to begin to open our eyes for perhaps the faintest hints, the faintest hints of something outside the hole. 
But it is there, and it is possible to get outside.