What's your favorite season to have an existential crisis?
Summer's mine, hands down.
I think it's because it feels so unexpected in the summer....you're eating ice cream, swimming in the ocean, drinking on a rooftop, strolling in the park... and all of a sudden you're contemplating the point of it all - what is life, anyway? - and realizing that the sea of people surrounding you, enjoying sunshine and loved ones - every single person will die someday.
So summery, right?
I find having an existential crisis on the most beautiful of days, in the season filled with the most sunlight, strangely comforting. It's as if somehow, all this beauty - painfully wonderful beauty - is at once reality and not. That to be fully present is to also embrace the fleetingness of it all - that all we know is what we know, but it's not all there is. It's sobering, even as I feel drunk with the sweet languidness of these days, thick as the humid air that drips off my skin.
I've seen an increased frequency of existential crises this past year, due to a couple of factors. One, I turned 40. I know 40 is the new 30, blah blah blah, but there's a perspective shift that comes (maybe it's connected to my slowing metabolism and slightly tilting hormones?) with rounding the fourth decade of life. I'm officially over FOMO. I feel at home in my skin and the spots, wrinkles, and extra pounds that it comes with. I care less about where and who I will be someday but more concerned with where and who I am right now.
Two, I celebrated one year of marriage. Being married has expanded my heart in ways I never imagined. The love overwhelms me - which is also frightening. How is my heart capable of loving someone so much - and what is the depth of this vulnerability? What do you do with all this love, especially with our inevitable mortality?
The older I get, the less I know. The more I question. But what I do know - it feels more sure. And I feel ever more grateful - even when thinking about death on a beautiful summer day.
