At some point in our lives, we step onto a treadmill, and our chase begins.
What exactly are we chasing?
We chase what we believe was missing from our childhood.
It could be love, acceptance, approval, self-worth, or adequacy.
It could be just one of them, but it’s usually a cocktail of all of them.
How much of each ingredient depends on the individual and what they believe is missing from who they are.
For me, it was self-worth and adequacy so I could be approved, accepted, and ultimately loved.
Through our life experiences and the meaning we give those experiences, we’re conditioned to believe the solution is “out there,” and we spend much of our lives chasing it down.
All so we can feel how we want to feel.
We don’t even realize we’ve stepped onto a treadmill, nor do we understand its power over our lives.
The treadmill is nefarious because it promises what we desire more than anything and provides micro-doses of that feeling.
Short-term blasts of a good feeling, followed by a let-down that’s the epitome of emptiness.
But that short-term blast gives us hope; it’s evidence that all our effort dedicated to our chase is working.
The treadmill is nothing more than a settling device. We settle for just enough while consistently craving just a little more.
The speed slowly increases, and the incline slowly rises because we adapt to the micro-doses and need more to feel how the treadmill once made us feel.
We’re junkies sprinting on a treadmill, and the feeling we desperately want to capture, our missing ingredient, is the horizon.
Our childhood conditioning and the micro-doses blind us to the futility of our actions.
Whatever feeling we’re pursuing is so important to us that we’ll chase solutions at ever-increasing costs.
The further and faster we run on the treadmill, the further and faster we run from the solution, and the more the emptiness we experience grows.
The emptiness is an existential pain we need to escape.
We feel like life has no meaning, no mission, no fulfillment.
We feel betrayed that what we were conditioned to chase isn’t delivering the goods it promised.
We feel entitled to feel better for putting up with all the crap we put up with on our chase.
Enter a new chase; we need a solution to the pain.
It could be as simple as living on autopilot, letting life go by without our active participation, settling for just enough.
Or, constantly seeking noise in whatever form it takes to drown out our pain, alcohol, drugs, porn, social media, Netflix, affairs, attaching to dogma, and chasing confirmation of that dogma so we feel righteous.
Anything and everything to feel something other than how we feel.
But yet again, the treadmill only supplies micro-doses, and our chase continues.
There are 3 options when it comes to the treadmill.
We Chase Until We Die:
We chase and chase, and one day, we reach the point of no return when we understand it’s too late to change. In our last moments, we see the futility of our chase with crystal clear clarity.
We experience the number one and two regrets of the dying as per Bronnie Wares’s experience as a hospice nurse:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
We die wrapped in a blanket of regret.
Life Knocks Us Off The Treadmill:
When the emptiness consumes us, and we attempt to outrun the pain, life will usually knock us off the treadmill.
Our addictions, as powerful or subtle as they may be, have consequences.
This can take many forms, job loss, divorce, disease, and DWIs; for me, it was prison.
Getting knocked off the treadmill doesn’t mean we’ve escaped the treadmill.
Getting knocked off creates one of the most challenging choices we’ll face.
Do we get back on, or do we take a new direction?
Our answer dictates the quality of the remainder of our life.
We Voluntarily Step Off:
This is the most courageous and difficult of the options.
Stepping off the treadmill requires we let go of the micro-doses.
It requires we let go of the comfort of complacency; even if life isn’t what we want it to be, it’s just enough and what we know.
Giving up the chase and voluntarily stepping off the treadmill means letting go of everything we’ve been conditioned to do, what we’re comfortable doing, and walking into an unknown abyss.
We’ve been chasing love, acceptance, approval, self-worth, adequacy, or whatever missing ingredient we’ve been chasing “out there.”
But what we seek, what we’ve been chasing all these years, lay in the abyss.
The abyss holds the solution and is not an unknown abyss at all.
It’s actually what we’ve been running from all these years, looking for the answer “out there.”
Love, acceptance, approval, self-worth, or adequacy can’t be chased and caught.
They’re cultivated and created from within.
We are the solution we’ve been seeking.
To feel how we want to feel, we must reinvent our role in life from chaser to creator.
We must connect with ourselves, what truly matters to us, and create meaningful solutions.
Whether it be finally sitting down at a typewriter and crafting a book of essays, exploring childhood dreams, taking that pottery class, or volunteering at a nonprofit.
What’s inside must come out.
The missing ingredient was never missing; we just needed to stop chasing to see that it was always there.
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