“Sleepwalking Through Life”

Welp, it’s official.

I’m old.

How do I know, you might ask?

I could point to a few things I guess.

The fact that I used to get sore after working out………and now I’m just sore.

Perhaps it’s that somehow my hair stylist, whenever I go to see her, has gray hair all over the floor around my chair. (Probably the guy before me)

Maybe it’s the fact that I am going to a “hair stylist” instead of a barber!

It could be any of those things, and more!

But today…….well, today…..I am realizing that I can no longer stay up late and function well the next day.

It’s true. No more sneaking up until midnight to watch “Friday Night Music Videos” without paying the price in the morning.

The last time I partied until 2am I looked at my watch to leave……..and it was 9pm.

And today……I’m feeling it. As Dave Ramsey might say, I’m paying the “stupid tax.”

In my defense, I didn’t stay up last night for the sake of frivolity.

Au contraire mon frere!!

No, last night I stayed up for noble reasons. I stayed up to welcome the arrival of our son, his wife, and our grandson. You see; we had arranged for them to drive all the way down from the Midwest to surprise my wife both for her birthday and our anniversary.

See! Noble!

And we would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids! (Just a nod to you Scooby Doo fans)

But their 1am arrival time (already WAY past the danger zone for me) turned into 4:40am, and I courageously braved the night just to greet them!

Seriously, I should probably be either canonized as a saint or admitted to an asylum.

And so…….the dawn came quickly, my friends. It came so……very……..quickly.

And so, today………and you can tell this by my writing………I am functioning on adrenaline only. As my daughter might say, I am running on “hopes and dreams.”

As I type this, I notice that I have a line of drool from my lips to the desk. My eyes look like they packed enough bags for a European vacation. My dog, Ludo, (who valiantly faced the night with me), took one look at his harness this morning, hit the snooze on his doggie alarm, and said, “Nah.”

I sit in my office and can’t remember whether I’m coming or going. I know I need to be doing something but can’t remember what.

If you ask me what I’m feeling, I couldn’t even tell you. I’m just numb. Just functioning. Just trying to make it through another day.

And then I realize that this is the way a lot of people go through life.

Just trying to survive.

Doing their best to get through the “next thing” so they can finish the day and crawl back into bed.

Emotionally numb.

Scrolling on their phones…..either literally or metaphorically.

This is the culture we live in.

A culture that is desperate for connection and addicted to isolation.

We set up profiles on every social media platform we can stomach, only to screen our calls and push them to voicemail we never check.

We are a culture of noise and busyness. Of anxiety, guilt, shame, and escape.

Seriously, so many of us stumble through life as if we’ve stayed up way too many nights in a row.

And a lot of us don’t even know what the point is.

Why are we stumbling around trying to climb the corporate ladder only to accumulate wealth but lose our families and our health in the process? Why do we flit from hobby to hobby, hoping something satisfies us? What’s the point of getting the latest device or car, only for those things to lose their luster around the 4th time we use them?

We know……we instinctively KNOW there is more to life than this, and yet we still get caught up in it all. We still wander around with proverbial bags under our eyes, hoping for our next rush of dopamine.

But we face the consequences of such a life.

Anxiety and depression are at an all-time high.

The number of people trying to escape into alcohol, pornography, drugs, entertainment or……well, Amazon……..is staggering.

When a spiritual adviser suggests we spend some solitary, quiet time with God……we nod our heads and internally roll our eyes.

If our counselor leads us in meditative or breathing exercises, we start to wonder where we want to go to lunch after session.

I know the latest trend in therapy is “mindfulness,” but I would propose we turn our attention back to “meaningfulness.” (I may have just made up that word)

Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who endured a Nazi concentration camp during WWII once wrote,

 “Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”

It vexes me that we are people who are living in the shallow end of the pool.

Instead of embracing the things that matter most; relationships, love, truth, God…..I mean REALLY embracing these things, not just dipping our toes in the water… we settle for acquaintances, lust, and self.

And maybe that’s the real tragedy.

Not that we are tired.

Not that life is hard.

Not even that we sometimes lose our way.

The tragedy is that so many people never fully wake up.

They drift through decades distracted, medicated, entertained, scrolling, buying, achieving, numbing, and escaping…..never slowing down long enough to ask what any of it is actually for.

And one day they look up, exhausted and emotionally malnourished, wondering why their soul still feels hungry after consuming everything but the things that truly nourish it.

Maybe the answer is not found in another dopamine hit, another purchase, another achievement, or another distraction.

Maybe the answer is found in waking up.

In paying attention again.

In sitting quietly long enough to hear the voice of God beneath all the noise.

In choosing depth over distraction.
Meaning over motion.
Presence over escape.

Because life is too sacred……and too short……to sleepwalk through it.