The Most Important Question in Life is: “Why?”
By: Stephen Chamberlin
Tags: Time, Purpose, Life, Anxiety, Awareness

Yet it is a question we almost always fail to ask ourselves.

Avoidance.

Escape.

Joy.

Curiosity.

Enthusiasm.

Return (childhood).

Mortality.

Off Leash.

Solitude.

Society.

Presence.

Intentionality.

Deliberateness.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau — Walden

I believe the why is far more important than the ‘what’ or the ‘how’. Whatever your what and how may be, you absolutely, positively, cannot get ‘unstuck’ without first knowing your why.

For far too long I have neglected my why. The hurried — nay — the frenetic existence most of us live preclude the asking of the question “why?”

Why am I constantly in a hurry? Why am I doing this work? Why do I accept a life that is mostly unfulfilling? Why are so many of my daily actions out of alignment or irrelevant to my values?

These are tough questions to answer and perhaps it is easier to constantly fill our minds with thoughts of the future….with “what” I am going to do next and “how” am I going to do it….rather than asking “why” am I doing this or that.

If we don’t stop to think, well we can avoid the question entirely and rush from childhood to death without ever confronting the question. For me — I lead this life to at least age 50 — it means I was virtually rudderless for more than half of my existence. Yes I did have many fufilling moments, but these moments were accidental. I never slowed down enough to discover my purpose.

What are your values? What is your why when applied to living your best life? I believe everyone has aspirations to some sort of vaguely imagined better life.

Ten months ago I launched the life of a nomad. I live in an Airstream trailer. All of my possessions (literally all of them) are either in the Airstream or on the truck. It’s not a perfect life. There are many challenges. However I had reached a point in life when I had retired from a career in the military, spent four years in the private sector, gotten a divorce and had lost the desire to climb any career ladder.

Far from family…no kids…I was forced to ask: Why? I felt bored, unfufilled, lonely…rudderless.

So much had the noise of life subsided that I could not avoid it anymore. Yet when confronted with the questions, well, it is very difficult to answer. Moreover, as I have found during the last 10 months, the answer comes in bits and pieces.

There I was, a 50+ man with no idea how to spend the time I had left. No idea what I wanted to do. No idea where I wanted to live. No idea why I was continuing to do what I was doing day after day, month after month. I certainly wasn’t fufilling any purpose. I wasn’t content. I was restless and confused.

The decision to become a nomad was impulsive (made over a weekend) and right (got lucky there). Spending time with different people, in different places has given me a sense of clarity I previously lacked.

It has allowed me to contemplate my why in a way that isn’t threatening or scary.

It has given me the space and timet othink deliberatly about my purpose. Space and time I did not know that I needed. Space and time that I previosuly feared.

I worked at a Sonoma, California winery for a while and had lots of conversations with people who, with tongues loosened by a day of wine tasting, expressed envy towards me because I had a relatively chill job. In fact, they more often than not implied or actually said that they felt trapped in a sub-optimal life. This isn’t to say they weren’t appreciative of what they had– but it is to say that most of us are chasing some vague ideal life that we can’t seem to either entirely visualize or materialize.

I don’t know — maybe it’s all about the fantasy anyway — any life will always be less good than the one imagined. I like to think of that mindset as ‘stuck’ rather than ‘trapped’. To me, stuck is a better descriptor of where most of us exist. We don’t know exactly what our best (or better) life looks like…and if we do have an idea, well we don’t know how to get there — which is different than believing that we can’t get there.

Here is a very brief sketch of my ‘whys’ — you will quickly see I have some work to do. I kind of suck at self-assessment.

My first ‘why’ is avoidance. If I am being honest, I have to include this. I’d rather not. It’s not a healthy reason to dump a conventional life of home and job. I am pathologically anxious. I’d rather not be a highly anxious person. It really sucks the joy out of life. Although there are effective ways to manage it, I readily admit that I am copping out. I’ve tried the usually effective management methods — CBT, meditation, therapy…. I have either not fully understood or more likely not done the work required to effectively apply these tools. So, I am avoiding the uncertainty of a conventional life.

Self-assess — if you are an anxious person, how often have you tried to avoid uncertainty (the thing that really makes you anxious) rather than dealing with the thought patterns that lead to anxiety to begin with? It’s easier to avoid. The problem is I am jumping in an Airstream to avoid the uncertainties of conventional life knowing full well that a whole new world of uncertainty will pop up the second I open the trailer door. A little dissonance…but it’s the truth.

Escape is a variation of avoidance. It’s a cop out. And yeah, I am chasing it. And yes, I will be let down.

Ok — done with being a Debbie Downer. Onto ‘joy’, ‘curiosity’, ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘return’. I believe the advice to find your passion is perhaps the worst possible advice anyone can give. I have no damn idea where or what my passion is and never will. However, I do on a daily basis find reasons to be joyful, curious and enthusiastic.

By ‘return’ I mean capturing just a little bit of the intense anticipatory pleasure that we mostly lose as adults but have in abundance as children (think the night before vacation! The night before Christmas!).

Mortality? Well see Thoreau above. At age 52 I know the end is somewhere around the bend. One of the benefits of aging is that you are forced to reckon with mortality. You can either curl up in the fetal position or embrace it — and maximize the content of the time you have left.

Your call.

Off leash — well where avoidance is a crappy reason to quit your job, being off the leash is a damn good one.

I cherish solitude. Solitude as I cross the country. I’ve cherished it. I am a bit unbalanced, but for the moment the pandemic has given me cover to be alone and not feel bad about it.

Presence, intentionally and deliberateness need no explanation. I mean how the hell can you live your best life if you are not intentional and deliberate about what you do, where you go, who you love, what you acquire, and what you let go of? And if you are not present — well what is the point?

I left a conventional life in March of 2020. It was pure accident that I moved from my fixed abode in Northern California to an Airstream trailer just as the pandemic began to scorch the country. It certainly increased the challenges associated with living as a nomad — but no more than it increased the challenge of conventional life.

Since then I have travelled from California, to New England and down the east coast to Florida.

I am still a work in progress but the “whys” I outlined at the beginning of my journey still apply.