Scheduled For Destruction
Sprout Sweater Episode 2
In the second journey (episode) of the podcast, Dave welcomes you aboard the ‘Sprout 1’ for another trip into metaphor, meaning and the mind. This week Dave explores the unsettling feelings of realising that you may not be living the life you had planned to live. Life can drift and we can get side-tracked or lose sight of some of those early-life dreams. If you have ever felt lost, crushed or trapped by life and have experienced what some might call the ‘mid-life crisis’ then this episode is for you.
Dave Algeo is a writer, coach, trainer and speaker empowering others to live big, by identifying the small but significant things that can transform the life we are living. Join Dave on the good ship 'Sprout1' as we explore the inner galaxy of the human mind, and find the sprouts that make the biggest difference. These are the sprouts you are looking for.
Search for 'Sprout Sweater' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes at https://www.stressedguru.com/the-sprout-sweater-podcast and more about his in person and online events at www.stressedguru.com. Drop Dave a line at dave@sproutsweater.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.
Episode 2 Show Notes
The following is a rough draft of the content (not a full transcript - more notes forming the basis of the podcast recording
Welcome aboard Sprout1 - I am your host, Dave Algeo, Chief Sprout Sweater.
Buckle up and enjoy this short journey into our inner world where metaphor, meaning and the mind collide like a bunch of colliding things out in space.
Understanding how the stories we tell ourselves impacts upon all aspects of our life is a powerful step towards getting your head back, your shit together and life back on your terms. It’s all about the power of the small - identifying the small things with the biggest clout - i.e., those actions, shifts in perspective, or new habits and rituals that make the biggest difference.
This is Episode 2 of ‘The Sprout Sweater’ - Scheduled for Destruction?
Ok, I mentioned it in episode 0 but now I need to nail my colours to the mast. I’m a nerd. A geek. In so many ways, but in particular, I have a love of sci-fi - books, movies, even the music! I love the science of space, galaxies, and the cosmos. I don’t understand it, but nevertheless I love it. It blows my mind and the sci-fact and sci-fi adventures I’ve immersed myself in over the years have proved a wonderful blend of awe, escapism, relaxation, learning and creative stimulation.
I first watched ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to that Galaxy’ when I was a kid - it was a television adaptation of the late great Douglas Adams’ book of the same title.
I was hooked from the start. From those initial scenes where Arthur Dent, the hapless, hopeless human lies in front of the bulldozer sent to knock down his house to make way for a new bypass.
The events unfold as Dent meets up with friend Ford Prefect who it turns out is from another planet and urges Dent to leave earth before its scheduled demolition, to make way for a hyperspace expressway. Oh, I could go on, but the point is not the book - although I do recommend it - it’s crazy, funny, full of non-human characters with very human idiosyncrasies - just brilliant.
Sigh - back to the title - scheduled for destruction. Just like Arthur Dent realising that not just his precious house, but his planet had been scheduled for destruction for some time, I had a very disturbing awakening to that fact in my own life in my early thirties.
Having bimbled through life not really knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up (still working on that one now), I found myself looking in the mirror one morning whilst shaving. Yep, that ol’ cliche - maybe that’s why it features so often in films?
Anyway, I did that most days - shave using the mirror, but on this particular morning, I looked at the once bright green eyes now dull and empty staring back at me. And a question formed in my mind.
Is this it?
Now let me backup. This hadn't come out of the blue. My life ain’t some movie. I had been increasingly feeling restless and wondering whether my choice to become a police officer had been the right one. I had enjoyed the job, but now faced a career in which I could continue to do what I was doing - police sergeant in various uniform roles, or specialise - traffic or CID, or go for promotion. None of those options excited me. In fact, the thought of those options turned my blood cold.
I felt like I was missing out on something. What? I didn’t know. But over the preceding months I had stuffed down that feeling, telling myself not to be so stupid, or selfish - to man up and deal with it. I had responsibilities and commitments after all. Family and financial.
Now, as I stared at the washed-out face looking back, hair receding and thinning (yes I did have hair once!), I felt trapped.
By life, by work and faced the prospect of seeing out my time heading to my own scheduled destruction date (ok dramatic term to use I know but it felt that way - I hoped I had years left obviously but I knew that the years ahead were rapidly being caught up by the years behind me. I had no idea of the D. o. D. (date of destruction) but the sense that I was not on a path that meant something was growing. I am not decrying the career - I’m proud to have served. But I have come to realise that we are all different, have so many different qualities, skills, and interests that one can easily be doing honourable work (whatever that work is) but nevertheless, it doesn’t satiate a deeper hunger down in your soul.
I was unhappy. Not because I was depressed per se, I frequently felt anxious - like a clamp down the left side of my face and neck, that I now realise arose from that negative inner voice I spoke about in last week’s podcast.
This went even deeper.
A desire. Not a fleeting desire fanned by the passion of a moment, but a deeper yearning.
To be more. Not in the sense of a career or status or money, but in the sense of a knowing - a knowing that there was more.
That I could be more, do more - change.
Is this it?
In the months and years that followed that morning in front of the mirror, I continued to bimble and gradually found my feet moving me continually towards the path I am now on. It wasn’t some amazing ‘road to Damascus’ epiphany leading to a dramatic instant shift.
But it was a deeply disorienting experience.
One which sticks with me to this day. One which, for me, acts as a bookmark, a turned corner of a page, in the biography of my life.
A place I can return to and see where the plot of my old life starts to unravel - and amidst the chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes exhilarating, years that followed, a new narrative for my life unfolded.
Some might call it the mid-life crisis, some might call it an awakening, some may say it’s just the kind of shit that we experience, and we need to ‘wind our necks in’ (as my Irish cousins would say) and get back to work.
But here’s the thing. The very fact that we have labels for it, or a rebuttal in the form of such phrases as ‘wind your neck in’, tells us something.
It is not an uncommon phenomenon.
At the time, I may have felt I was the only one and what was wrong with me - something I will be expanding on in future episodes, particularly the episode entitled ‘Mid-Life Crisis Mis-Management’.
But clearly, I wasn’t. I have since had innumerable and wonderful conversations with others that have led me to realise this is, dare I say, even a rite of passage for us as human beings?
Perhaps, we spend our earlier years absorbing and adapting to the world around us? Necessary, but as we develop our sense of identity personally and professionally, how much of that identity is formed from within?
Or, as I feel so many of us discover at some point in our life, is it formed predominantly on the basis of those more external factors, leading us to mould and adapt ourselves, our drives, qualities and inner spirit to the external?
It’s not as if we had any clear sense of who we really are in the first place. We are thrust into life and it is one octane fuelled learning experience after another; how to get attention, food, to move about, then get more effective at it, to make sense of the world and those strange big things - people I think they are called. There’s one or two of them who seem to be around more often than others - and that for better or worse depends upon the circumstances into which we find ourselves pitched as a helpless baby.
If you think about it, it’s a full-time job simply navigating life and getting through isn’t it? No wonder we develop a sense of who we are on rather rocky ground - that of the world around us, the people and pressures that exist and the drive to make our way in the world.
Is this it?
Born, with some unknown date of destruction ahead, doomed to simply bimble through life at the mercy of random events and interactions - a bit like a coin being dropped into those coin pushing games at the arcade. We didn’t get to choose the slot we were to be dropped through, did we? And now all we have to do is bounce off the pins and reach the bottom - hopefully in a place where there is a chance we might accrue something decent in the way of more pennies (more friends, family, money, status, accolades and so on).
Ok, I’m laying it on a bit thick here I know. But there is for many of us a sense of pointlessness in just playing our part to get by.
And that's where I came to realise that, that question - ‘is this it?” is so much more than an inconvenient feeling, that we just need to stuff back down inside.
It is a shout from deep inside “Wake up!’
A call to adventure.
Once we realise that we may lose or have lost our sense of self in all this day to day living and getting through, making a name for ourselves, building a life or whatever we want to call it;
We can get on with the business of finding ‘ourself’.
Our true self. One formed from within. One in which we shine a light on all those scripts and stories we automatically play in order to live, and ask - is this it? Is this me? Is there more to me than this particular story?
And that is where the adventure can begin. Now I’m not talking about some wild nail-biting thriller type adventure in which you ditch everything you know, have or love. That’s more akin with the ‘mid-life crisis mis-management’ response I will explore in another episode.
But nevertheless, we can embrace the spirit of adventure, and see this as a life-long expedition.
As the character Andy Dufresne says in one of my all-time favourite movies the ‘Shawshank Redemption’ - ‘Get busy living or get busy dying’.
You see, we are all going to become part of the demolition process to make way for that great hyperspace expressway in the sky.
No need to dwell on it - but accepting that as a reality, whilst jarring or disturbing for each and every one of us, is the greatest opportunity we have to - ‘Get busy living’.
The good news is, it’s not like those poor contestants lining up to be a star on X Factor. You know those ones who say how this is their last chance, their one opportunity, their final shot.
Rubbish.
Each and every moment is a call to adventure. A call to live - whatever and wherever you are.
You don’t need to win X Factor, get that promotion, win the lottery, or lose that weight.
Right here, right now, you can tune in and drop out. Tune in to the stories that we allow to pilot us automatically through life and drop out - of automatic.
Choose to be present.
Choose to experience.
Choose differently.
Choose the same - but see it differently.
Notice things.
Dream big and take small but consistent steps towards it.
Time continues on. But one thing is for sure. Absently passing it will lead it to fly by.
Choosing to be present to the moments and the experiences, slows it down. Ok, not in reality but in our perception - and isn’t that what counts?
But how? How do I do this?
Step by step and sprout by sprout.
By first acknowledging that you may well have had that question, in any one of its variations, surface within you (‘is this it?’ ‘Is this what I’ve worked so hard for?’ ‘There's got to be more, hasn't there?’ ‘Am I bad/ selfish/ pathetic to want something more?’)
And then by not simply dismissing it. Hold it up to the light. Reflect on it, explore it. Talk to someone about it, a trusted friend perhaps. By exposing it to the light, you give yourself an opportunity to assess it. Is it a reflection of a bad day, week, or month? Fair enough. That doesn’t necessarily mean there will be nothing to do - perhaps there is a conversation to be had, an action to be taken.
Or is it a reflection of something deeper - that quiet voice becoming more insistent that something needs to change? A little more scary perhaps? Absolutely, but by acknowledging it you are taking the onus. You are exerting the choice and therefore retina control over how you respond. The temptation may be to push it back down, pretend it was never there. But that risks it coming back stronger and revealing itself in ways that are more disruptive nee destructive. Cue ‘mid-life crisis mis-management.’
But let’s leave that for the next episode.
For now, it is enough to recognise whether the ‘is it?’ question is a thing for you. How does it show up? What question is it asking? To what new stories is it calling you?
It may be calling you to take stock.
Where are you now? How does that compare with your previously held dreams and goals? It may or may not have been something specific, like ‘I want to be a brain surgeon’ (I actually wanted to be one of those as a kid - no chance with the benign central tremor I have in my hands!). I guess I have taken up a different form of brain surgery? No? Perhaps not ;0.
Take some time to think back. What were those dreams? If you struggle with that, I wonder if you might find some tell-tale signs in the books, films, or TV programmes you loved; in the games you played, or the hobbies you pursued?
What was it about them? A sense of adventure? Curiosity, exploration, learning, camaraderie? Love, heroism, healing?
We can often find clues in those past fascinations and passions. Perhaps they may provide an inkling of the new stories awaiting us?
Who knows? But one thing is for sure. The simple ‘is this it?’ question, and the equally simple answer ‘no’ may well belay a far more exciting, rich, and compelling answer.
The question is - will you go there? Will you inquire within to see what stories await you?
Dave Algeo,
Coach, writer, speaker, and trainer – achieving success with wellbeing (not at the expense of it).
dave@stressedguru.com