When Fear Takes Over: Wrestling with Meaning in Chaos
“God doesn’t build a staircase leading nowhere.” That line has been on my mind for the last few days and it has dominated my thought life today. I keep waking up in the middle of the night gripped by the chaos of fear.
A fear rooted in finances but a fear more primal, more existential.
Life verging towards chaos, life as the absurd, life begging the question does it mean anything?
I am someone who tends towards the depressive side, a psyche touched by melancholy as any good poet has. If I’m honest with myself then I have to admit that the underside of a lot of the fears I hold is a big one of what if it’s all just meaningless.
That line of God building a staircase has always been a touchstone for me when things start to spin, when I have trouble trying to trace my disparate life experiences together.
The Strangest Secret: A Lifeline for Existential Doubts
It comes from the great motivational recording from Earl Nightingale, The Strangest Secret.
That classic recording where we get Nightingale’s famous maxim of “we become what we think about.”
But it is that line about the staircase that brings me so much relief.
I used to tell myself it when I was knocking doors when I had $5 to my name and would think I have a doctorate and I’m being disrespected from every homeowner I talk to, that I don’t deserve this. God, I can’t believe I’m saying this.
It’s embarrassing to admit feeling like the world owes you something just for existing.
I think door to door is a great industry to grind that out of you.
If you cannot provide value instantly within the first five seconds of knocking on someone’s door then you’ll get rejected. And what a lesson in life that is.
A basic lesson in the economic marketplace.
Lessons from the Past: Seeing Order in Life’s Chaos
One could argue like David Hume did that what we call identity, this thing I call me, is just a bundle of perceptions through time, that there is nothing actually inherent to it, no basis other than the ever-shifting thoughts.
When we think of an object like a rose, we associate that object with properties like its color of red or its thorniness and Hume is saying there is nothing actually inherent in the object other than its properties.
So when you apply that to the self, there is nothing inherent to it other than the shifting perceptions and experiences in the world.
Through time if one adopts Hume’s view you could see how that would drift towards an inherently nihilistic view of life.
And that typically is where I go.
Hence my saving touchstone from The Strangest Secret.
On a long enough timeline when we look at our lives we can see the order underneath something’s that have occurred.
We didn’t get that job because 6 months later we were in the perfect position for the first step in our dream careers two years later, or we lost that relationship so that we would move to another state and meet our soulmate.
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The Limits of Human Perspective: Why We Can’t See the Full Picture
On a long enough timeline the things in our lives start to make sense in the grand scheme of things but when you’re in the middle of it and going through it this longer-term perspective is very hard to achieve.
That is one of the reasons this line about God building resonates so much with me, it comes to the surface of my mind when my perspective is diminished, reduced to the events of the immediate, to the chaos, without recourse to the 30,000-foot view of my life.
That has been where I have been recently, very stressed about money and when I get into that headspace I start to question the decisions I’ve made which has led me to this point.
But in the questioning of the decisions I’ve made I hardly ever look to the higher timeline, I become consumed by the immediate.
And when I get stuck there I lose that humility that comes from the faith in not knowing what’s next or how it all connects, that humility that it will all work out because it always has.
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Choosing Faith Over Nihilism: Reclaiming Control in Uncertainty
I start to assume that I know what’s best for my life, that these goals that I’ve set to make me happy or fulfilled will in fact do just that.
These limited goals that I’ve set up with my limited mind. I hope you can see the point here.
The very mind with which I am setting these goals with can only ever see like .01% of the whole of life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten the thing that I thought I wanted and it made my life miserable.
At one time I was convinced I had to have this one woman, I got her, then we moved in, and it destroyed my life. I’m talking full-blown PTSD for like 2 years and an all-consuming obsession after that.
That is just one example of many.
Why then would I think that I know what’s best for my life?
But God doesn’t build a staircase leading nowhere.
All of these things that happen inside this thing called life are always working for my best advantage.
Now I know that sounds extreme but I can make the choice to view life that way or make the choice to view life as an inherently meaningless thing originating out of nothing and drifting towards nothing.
It’s an either/or choice for me.
One choice frees me from the chaos of the present moment, of trying to figure everything out assuming I know what’s best for me, and the other leaves me incapacitated.
Look back over your life, at those little twists and turns, those massive valleys and peaks, and take the longer-term perspective, how that move to a new state allowed you to meet him who opened this door for you to go there and be in the position to do that, and I hope you’ll see the evidence that “God doesn’t build a staircase leading nowhere.”
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