The other day I was asked the following question: How do you derive meaning in the face of chronic illness?
I had to give this question a lot of deliberation. It made me reflect on what I had historically derived meaning from, and why those sources were in fact, rather fragile.
What was meaningful to me before?
For as long as I can remember, most of my meaning came from the things that I’ve done, or was doing.
Without a north star or mission, I would feel honestly depressed. I was most at peace when I had something to bite my teeth into. The subject of which changed, from judo, to studies, building a business, but there was always something ahead.
I don’t need to explain to you how gut-wrenching it is when all of this is taken away. You hear stories of the deep depression athletes fall into when their careers end suddenly. How people leaving service roles struggle to find purpose.
The problem, however, with a condition like Long Covid, is this.
It doesn’t strip away one aspect of your life that gives you meaning, but all of it.
If you lost your career, or your ability to do your sport, or study, most people would counter this by finding another avenue to channel that energy. A new project, a new activity, a new sport. But long covid removes all of these from your life abruptly.
No exercise-based activity is possible without feeling flu like.
No work is possible because you can’t sit upright.
Learning a new language is out because your brain is a foggy soup.
It felt like my world had collapsed, and with it any source of meaning or hope, and I plunged into a deep depression.
The depression you experience with chronic fatigue is quite unlike anything, and it’s very hard to explain.
The depression you experience isn’t ‘normal’ depression.
It’s not a funk you can get yourself out of. It feels like an assault on your neural chemistry, and all the normal coping mechanisms that would lift you out - exercise, connection etc. are all off the table as they make it worse.
It’s rather a cruel thing. I spent the first few months in a state of bemusement. I tried to exercise, thinking this will lift the ever-present smog, only to feel worse and worse and worse. The worst thing for a depression and a lacking sense of meaning would be to lie in a dark empty room, with no light or exercise - yet this is exactly all your body can do.
Back to the topic of meaning.
In the early days, I clung onto my sense of meaning through the only vehicle I knew how. By working towards things. Improving my flexibility, reading, painting. Doing what I could with my capacity, and finding a goal to work towards.
I found this to work in the times of decent health, but when I descended into deeper depths of suffering, I found this wasn’t enough.
More recently I suffered a despair like I had never encountered before. Constant daggers of pain in my brain, hallucinations, paranoia - it wasn’t ideal to say the least! And in these times, the last thing I would be thinking about was working towards some goal, when I was merely trying to get through the day.
What gave me meaning during this time, a time where I thought the end may be near, was simply how I would conduct myself.
I found immense meaning in gritting my teeth, and facing whatever suffering was to come with stoicism and resilience. If I was to go out, I would go out with gritted teeth, and an unrelenting optimism.
It’s quite a morbid thought, but it truly got me through, and it’s a mental model I will carry forward to this day.
My old sources of meaning were weak and fragile. They were conditional on my body and minds ability to do things, they were rooted in the future.
But when your meaning is derived from how you conduct yourself, then it doesn’t matter what happens. You can accept what occurs to you, no matter how severe, and know that all you must do is face it in a stoic way.
Marcus Aurelius touted something along these lines.
He focused on what one can control – one's actions and thoughts – rather than external events. He believed that embracing adversity, even death, was a natural part of life and that by accepting it, one could find a deeper sense of purpose and freedom.
In my new model, the way I derive my meaning is just this - the way I act and the way I think. It is and will be my source of meaning until the day I die. A source that will never end, a summit I will never reach, but a source I can draw from until my very last breath.
Hell yes.
Viktor Frankl was in Nazi concentration camps for 3 years and lost his entire family in that time. He said "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
This is a shattering illness and has completely torn my old life and self apart, but I will not let it take over my resolve and agency.
Beautiful perspective on this, Harry.
The pursuit is just as, if not more, meaningful as the end itself. That reflection is full of so much happiness and potential to tap into, and alleviate the focus on reaching any particular goal.
You’re spot on to point out the stoics’ emphasis on assigning the meaning to things ourselves. Nothing should be considered squarely good, bad, happy, sad — that is a choice from within.